Preamble

The House met at Eleven o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — DEFENCE

R.A.F. Training Command (Aircraft)

Mr. Wilkinson: asked the Minister of State for Defence from what aircraft types a selection will be made of the trainer to succeed the Varsity for pilot training in the multi-engined stream in Training Command, Royal Air Force; when will the choice be made; and when is the new twin-engined trainer expected to enter service.

The Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Air Force (Mr. Antony Lambton): We are considering possible replacements for the Varsity for pilot training but I have no statement to make at present.

Mr. Wilkinson: Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the first tasks to which his hon. Friend the Minister of State for Defence Procurement will have to address himself—and I welcome him on the Front Bench in his new position—is that of finding a replacement for the venerable Varsity, the "Super Pig" as it was affectionately known to whole generations of post-war aviators in the Royal Air Force? Is the type of aircraft he is envisaging something of the King Air type?

Mr. Lambton: As my hon. Friend says, the Varsity has been in R.A.F. service for 20 years, and it is, therefore, obviously necessary that it should be replaced. As to the type of replacement, the number of aircraft required is too small to justify special development, and we are, therefore, thinking in terms of adapting existing civil aircraft.

Mr. John Morris: Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that in the re-juggling of

aircraft that has taken place in the Royal Air Force there will be no increase in the total money available for R.A.F. equipment?

Mr. Lambton: The costing has been considered.

Pay, Allowances and Pensions

Mr. Wilkinson: asked the Minister of State for Defence whether he will now compare the sum total precentage of the defence budget devoted to pay, allowances and pensions for regular servicemen, reservists and civilians, together, in the financial years 1961–62 and 1966–67 with that percentage projected for 1971–72.

Mr. Lambton: I have nothing to add to the information which I gave to my hon. Friend in the debate on the Consolidated Fund Bill on 25th March.— [Vol. 814, c. 993–1000.]

Mr. Wilkinson: While thanking my hon. Friend for that answer, may I say that I seem to recall that the sum in question was 54 per cent. Does this not mean that we shall have to examine more thoroughly the value for money that can be derived from a citizen force or reservist concept and move towards a system of having a fixed target in terms of percentage of G.N.P. for defence spending over the years ahead?

Mr. Lambton: I have nothing to add to the answer I gave to my hon. Friend taking half an hour the other day.

Civil Marine Science Programme (Royal Navy Rôle)

Mr. Dalyell: asked the Minister of State for Defence if he will make a statement on the rôle of the Royal Navy in the British Civil Marine Science Programme.

The Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Navy (Mr. Peter Kirk): The British civil marine science programme is co-ordinated by the Natural Environment Research Council and falls, therefore, within the responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science. The Hydrographer of the Navy and the Royal Naval Scientific Service co-operate with the Council at every level of its activities.

Mr. Dalyell: Those of us concerned about the legitimate career aspirations of


naval personnel are aware of the considerable expertise that resides in a naval establishment such as Alverstoke. Does the hon. Gentleman not feel that the Admiralty, with the experience of the Hydrographer behind it, is not the best agency to run a co-ordinated programme?

Mr. Kirk: I do not think it would be appropriate for the Naval Department to run the civil side of this programme but we do co-operate very fully in hydro-graphic surveys, oil pollution investigations and that sort of thing. I think that this is the best way of doing it.

Married Quarters

Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles: asked the Minister of State for Defence what is the average length of time on the waiting list for married quarters for naval ratings in the United Kingdom, Army other ranks in the United Kingdom, Royal Air Force other ranks in the United Kingdom, and naval ratings in Portsmouth, respectively.

The Minister of State for Defence (Lord Balniel): The length of time spent on a waiting list depends on a wide variety of factors and it would be both difficult and misleading to give an average waiting time for each Service in the United Kingdom as a whole. At Portsmouth the waiting time for naval ratings at the moment varies from three to eight months.

Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles: As the problems of family separation are obviously of especial difficulty in the Royal Navy, could the Minister say what steps are being taken to reduce waiting time in Portsmouth and for naval ratings as a whole?

Lord Balniel: In the town of Portsmouth 700 quarters are under construction and due to be completed between now and early 1972. There are plans to acquire a further 500 by 1975. In so far as the Royal Navy as a whole is concerned, there are plans to provide approximately 3,000 additional married quarters by 1975.

Mombasa and South African Ports (Naval Visits)

Mr. Wingfield Digby: asked the Minister of State for Defence how many British warships in 1970 called at

Mombasa and South African ports, respectively.

Mr. Kirk: The number of British warships which called at Mombasa and South African ports in 1970 was 16 and 46, respectively.

Mr. Digby: Do not these figures show the dependence of the Royal Navy on South African ports? Will the use of Mombasa be discontinued once the Beira patrol is allowed to face the other way and watch the Russian fleet in the Indian Ocean?

Mr. Kirk: We need both these facilities, and I doubt whether we shall want to give up either in the near future.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: Can the hon. Gentleman confirm the statement of the right hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys) that the Beira patrol is to cease very shortly?

Mr. Kirk: I think that policy is made by Her Majesty's Government.

Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles: Will my hon. Friend take the opportunity to pay tribute to the hospitality of South African ports and of Mombasa to Royal Navy ships throughout the periods of office of successive Governments in recent years?

Mr. Kirk: Certainly. They are very hospitable in both cases.

Committee on Headquarters

Mr. Wingfield Digby: asked the Minister of State for Defence whether he intends to issue a White Paper on the findings to date of the Committee on Headquarters under the Chairmanship of the Permanent Under-Secretary of State of the Ministry of Defence; and what subject the Committee is now examining.

Lord Balniel: The main recommendations so far made by the Committee have already been set out in the Statements on the Defence Estimates 1970 and 1971. The Committee is continuing its activities over a wide range of areas, including, in particular, the management methods and techniques used at Headquarters and the relationships between the Ministry of Defence and the Command Headquarters.

Mr. Digby: Will the recommendations of the Committee effect a saving of civilian manpower in the command structure? Was the Committee consulted over the new procurement plans for the Ministry of Defence, and particularly the advice of the staff divisions, who are apt to change their views about the requirements for a particular weapon?

Lord Balniel: My hon. Friend will know that major changes have already been made in the command structure of the Navy and the Royal Air Force, and next year Army Strategic Command—Southern, Western and Northern Command—will be replaced by a single command at Wilton. This will result in improved efficiency and a saving of about 250 military personnel and 1,000 civilian personnel.
Turning to the changes about procurement which were announced yesterday, Mr. Rayner's Committee did not technically fall within the remit of the headquarters organisation Committee, but Mr. Rayner had a very full consultation with the members who participate in that Committee. It will, I believe, achieve a major improvement in the procurement of all weapon systems within the Ministry of Defence.

Mr. John Morris: While, obviously, we shall want to debate yesterday's White Paper later, may I ask how far the finding announced yesterday by the Government is in accordance with any finding of the P.U.S. Committee?

Lord Balniel: There will be a debate on the transfer of functions Order in Council in due course, when the matter can be debated at length. It was not the purpose of the previous Administration to wind up the Ministry of Aviation Supply. This was declared policy of Her Majesty's Government, and I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that it is welcomed by the Ministry of Defence as being a major reform in the procurement of all weapons systems.

Non-Polaris Submarines (Armament)

Mr. Wall: asked the Minister of State for Defence if he will make a statement about the armament of British non-Polaris submarines.

Mr. Kirk: I have nothing to add to the reply given by my hon. and noble Friend

on 14th January, 1971.—[Vol. 809, c. 233–4.]

Mr. Wall: Can my hon. Friend say what is being done to replace the present semi-obsolete anti-ship torpedoes in these vessels, and what progress is being made in the development of a submarine-mounted missile.

Mr. Kirk: We hope that the Mark 24 torpedo will be in service in the early 1970s. We are studying a submarine-launched missile. If it proves to be a worthy concept, its introduction into service will come somewhat later.

Fleet Air Arm (Royal Air Force Pilots)

Mr. Wall: asked the Minister of State for Defence if he will make a statement on the special training given to Royal Air Force pilots who are to operate aircraft from Her Majesty's ships; and on how many operational tours they will perform.

Lord Balniel: These pilots receive familiarisation training appropriate to the embarked rôle. The number of operational tours is decided in the light of circumstances but would normally be one.

Mr. Wall: Does that reply mean that senior officers of Royal Air Force aircraft in an aircraft carrier will only have done one tour? Can he say who will provide the maintenance of these aircraft when they are afloat and which service will provide the deck crews?

Lord Balniel: My hon. Friend has asked some technical questions, and I would perhaps find it easier to answer him in writing. There will, however, be a significant proportion of Royal Air Force personnel in the "Ark Royal" who have had previous experience of operating from land bases. Perhaps my hon. Friend will allow me to write to him in answer to his specific question.

Mr. John Morris: But the hon. Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) has asked the Minister a basically very simple question. He wants to know the future for fixed wing aircraft in the Royal Navy. Perhaps the Minister can deal with that and say that there is no future for fixed wing flying in the Royal Navy because the Royal Air Force will be undertaking this task.

Lord Balniel: That is not what my hon. Friend asked. As has been frequently announced in the House, there are no plans to reopen recruiting for fixed wing flying in the Fleet Air Arm. As we have explained, we have not yet taken a decision about flying vertical take-off aircraft from cruisers. Therefore, the question of providing pilots for that kind of flying does not yet arise.

Mr. Wall: What I want to know is how the Royal Air Force will perform its new rôle, which most informed opinion thinks it is impossible for it to perform.

Lord Balniel: The future rôle of the Fleet Air Arm lies overwhelmingly in helicopter flying. This is the expanding rôle for the Fleet Air Arm.

Mr. Dalyell: Will the hon. Gentleman be in a position to report on the very considerable technical difficulties, particularly turbulence, of vertical take-off and landing on carriers? When is the report to which he referred expected?

Lord Balniel: The "Ark Royal" is to conduct vertical take-off trials in May, and I shall be attending some of them.

Young Servicemen

Mr. Frank Allaun: asked the Minister of State for Defence approximately how many members of the Armed Forces are at present absent without obtaining leave; how many of these joined the forces between the ages of 15 and 18 years; and if he will consider granting discharge for the latter category if they request it.

Lord Balniel: Service statistics are not such as to enable me to give all the information asked for, and I will write to the hon. Member. All requests for discharge are very carefully considered.

Mr. Allaun: But surely the figures should be known. Is the noble Lord aware that many of these young men get into petty crime and trouble when they are on the run in order to keep themselves? As many of them would give themselves up and suffer, say, a month's punishment if they knew that they could then be discharged, will the noble Lord consider this matter with a view to making a public announcement?

Lord Balniel: I appreciate the deep concern which the hon. Gentleman has always shown in this matter, but I am sure that he will understand that service in the Armed Forces involves acceptance of military law, which is part of the law of the country. To allow men to escape the consequences of their absence simply because of their success in evading capture would be unfair to those who perform the service which they undertake when they enter the military forces and would have a harmful effect on the morale and discipline of the Armed Forces.

Mr. John: Does the noble Lord accept that there are many people in the pre-Donaldson Report category and that people who, if they had been born later, would have had the option to withdraw from the forces at 21 should now be placed in a special category?

Lord Balniel: I do not accept that. By accepting the Donaldson Committee's Report we have made a major advance in liberalisation. I do not think it would be reasonable for us to undertake a retrospective act of the kind put forward by the hon. Gentleman.

Conscription

Mr. Frank Allaun: asked the Minister of State for Defence if he will give an assurance that joining the European Economic Community will not involve reintroducing military conscription in Great Britain.

Lord Balniel: I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch) yesterday.—[Vol. 815, c. 211.]

Mr. Allaun: As only Luxembourg does not have conscription, is not considerable pressure likely to be put on Britain by the other Governments to have it, particularly if we are part of a European defence force?

Lord Balniel: Irrespective of pressure on Her Majesty's Government, the decision on defence policy rests with the Government in this country. The Treaty of Rome does not refer to military matters, and, therefore, joining the European Economic Community has no relevance to the question of the reintroduction of military conscription.

Rear-Admiral Morgan Giles: Far from Britain having to change to conscription in the event of her joining the European Economic Community, is it not a fact that our regular system of recruiting is the envy of our allies on the Continent?

Lord Balniel: There are few countries which can claim such high standards of professional military competence as those shown by the Services of this country.

Mr. Allason: Will my hon. Friend reject the pleas for conscription coming from the Opposition and ensure that he pays the rate for the job?

Lord Balniel: One of the mercies of Parliamentary life is that I am not answerable for the views of the hon. Member for Salford, East (Mr. Frank Allaun). The question of Service pay is kept constantly under review. My hon. Friend will know that we have appointed an independent review body to keep Service pay constantly under review.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: Surely my hon. Friend's position on the matter of conscription is very well known, and, contrary to what the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. Allason) is suggesting, my hon. Friend was pleading against conscription, not for it.

Recruits (Unpaid Leave)

Mr. John: asked the Minister of State for Defence what proportion of Service recruits are, after recruitment at a careers information office, sent on unpaid leave; what is the average duration of such leave; and what proposals there are for converting such leave to paid leave.

Lord Balniel: In the case of the Navy and R.A.F., none. In the case of the Army some recruits spend a brief time on unpaid leave, but statistics of the numbers doing so are not maintained. For adults and young soldiers this period has been reduced to an average of four days, and we plan to reduce it further. For juniors it is 14 days. I have no plans to convert such leave to paid leave.

Mr. John: While welcoming the hon. Gentleman's assurance that this period is being reduced, may I ask him whether he would not think again about it, because if recruits have to wait for the Army's

convenience—and after they have been received upon their recruitment, they are waiting for the Army's convenience—they ought to receive pay during that period?

Lord Balniel: No. I would not accept the views which the hon. Gentleman has put forward, but I will consider them in the light of what he has said. I am satisfied that the number of recruits who decline to be enlisted because they will not receive pay during this very short period is really totally insignificant.

Major-General James d'Avigdor-Goldsmid: Would the Minister not agree that when a recruit who wants to join the Army enlists certain inquiries have to be made as to his credentials and his character, and that for that reason there is a delay before he is finally recruited?

Lord Balniel: My hon. and gallant Friend has pointed to a very significant factor which leads to this short delay.

Mr. Brian Walden: But, if that is the case, why is it necessary for the Army but not, apparently, for the other two Services?

Lord Balniel: For exactly the same reasons which operated when hon. Gentlemen opposite were responsible for these affairs.

Exocet Weapon System

Mr. John: asked the Minister of State for Defence what discussions are currently taking place regarding the Exocet Weapon System; and what consideration is being given to the procurement of an alternative system.

Mr. Kirk: Negotiations with the French for the purchase of Exocet are still proceeding.

Mr. John: Would the hon. Gentleman take the opportunity of denying the report of the defence correspondent of The Guardian on 20th March that this missile is to be delivered later and will cost more and that the Government are now considering the whole of this weapon system?

Mr. Kirk: The hon. Gentleman really must not believe everything he reads in the newspapers.

Mr. Dalyell: What is the delay?

Mr. Kirk: There is not one. We are negotiating.

White Tor, Dartmoor (Flagpole)

Mr. Carol Johnson: asked the Minister of State for Defence (1) why, after more than 23 years of live-firing use of the Merrivale area in the Dartmoor National Park, it has been found necessary to dig a large pit for a concrete base and erect an additional flagpole structure on White Tor; why such work has been carried out without observing agreed consultation procedure with the Park Planning Authority and in direct contravention of Ministry of Planning Circular No. 100; and why the convenant in the Duchy of Cornwall licence granted in 1956, which forbids damage to natural tors, has been ignored;

(2) whether, in view of the beauty of White Tor in the Dartmoor National Park and of its scheduled ancient monuments, he will at once direct that the flagpole structure recently constructed there by the military authorities should be removed and the site restored without delay.

The Minister of State for Defence Procurement (Mr. Ian Gilmour): It had become necessary to improve the public warning system by the erection of a flagpole near White Tor as a result of increasing public access to the Merrivale Range area. The Dartmoor National Park Committee was informed, and Circular 100 was not contravened. The flagpole has been sited some 100 yards from the natural tor at the summit. It would not be in the interests of public safety to remove the flagpole.

Mr. Johnson: is the hon. Gentleman aware that that is a most unsatisfactory reply and that both the siting and the usefulness of the flagpole are certainly in dispute, and that it is doubtful whether it will add further to the warnings which exist? Over and above that, does not this undermine completely the arrangements built up for prior consultation with the Park Planning Authority? The Clerk to Devon County Council specifically asked for a decision to be held up pending the Park Planning Authority's consideration of the matter. In view of the appointment of the

Nugent Committee to review the matter of the holding of land by the military, is it not a very awkward moment at which to undermine the whole attitude to the military use of Dartmoor?

Mr. Gilmour: No. I cannot accept any of the contentions of the hon. Member. He ignores the factor of public safety, which is surely a very important one. He ignores the fact that this is one flagpole added to eight which are already there. It has been carefully sited as a result of the advice of Lady Fox, who is the head lecturer in archaelogy at Exeter University. On the planning point, paragraph 5(b) lays down that minor operations of this sort are not subject to prior consultation with the planning authority, although, as I said, the planning authority was informed.

Mr. Johnson: In view of that reply, can the hon. Gentleman explain why Lady Fox should be invited for her opinion but the Park Planning Authority, which is directly responsible, should be ignored?

Mr. Gilmour: Well, Lady Fox is the head lecturer in archæology at Exeter University. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] She is the author of Her Majesty's Stationery Office's booklet on Dartmoor and a former adviser on archæological matters to the Parks Committee and the Ancient Monuments Division of the Department of the Environment. Therefore, she was plainly a suitable person.

Mr. John Morris: I am very glad to hear the credentials of this distinguished lady, but perhaps the hon. Gentleman would seek to answer my hon. Friend's question. Why should she be invited, as opposed to the appropriate authority?

Mr. Gilmour: As I say, under paragraph 5(b) this was a minor operation which is not subject to Circular 100. The county council was informed. It is true that the clerk asked for a postponement, but after being told of the reason he did not insist that there should be delay. I must emphasise that public safety is involved. This is caused by increased public access, which I am sure the House will welcome, though, perhaps, not those for whom the hon. Gentleman is speaking.

Mr. Johnson: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of that reply, I give notice


that I shall take an opportunity of raising the matter on the Adjournment.

Nuclear, Bacteriological and Chemical Warfare

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: asked the Minister of State for Defence what percentage of the defence budget is taken by units which will develop, deploy, or in any way use or be associated with nuclear weapons or bacteriological or chemical warfare.

Lord Balniel: The resources devoted to the Polaris force are detailed in the Statement on the Defence Estimates. It is not in the public interest to divulge further information of the sort requested by the hon. Member.

Mr. Jenkins: Is it not in the public interest that the public should know to what extent our forces are committed to the use of weapons which are internationally prohibited, or ought to be internationally prohibited if the human race is to survive? Therefore, should not the public know what the position is, even if not in particular detail? One recognises that the hon. Gentleman cannot give detailed information, but the public should know broadly what the situation is. Will the hon. Gentleman not, therefore, reconsider his answer?

Lord Balniel: No. To give the wider information for which the hon. Gentleman asks would be to give information which would be of assistance to a potential aggressor. I think the whole House will agree it would not be right to give it. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the forces would not utilise weapons which are prohibited by international agreements to which we are signatories.

Northern Ireland

Mr. John Morris: asked the Minister of State for Defence what consideration he has given to lengthening the tour of duty of service units posted to Northern Ireland.

Mr. Ian Gilmour: The length of emergency tour has been reviewed on a number of occasions, but, as I said in the Defence Estimates debate on 11th March, I think that four months is long enough.—[Vol. 813, c. 740–1.]

Mr. Morris: I would remind the hon. Gentleman of the words he used on that occasion:
I am inclined to think that anything longer than four months would be too long."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 11th March, 1971; Vol. 813, c. 741.]
He said he would certainly bear in mind the suggestion of continuity of service of intelligence officers. Originally when the period of four months was decided, this matter was urgent, and accommodation was then unsatisfactory, but now there has been a great demand on the forces and there should be some improvement in the accommodation. Will the hon. Gentleman ensure that the door is not closed completely to reconsideration of this issue in order to ensure the more efficient use of our troops?

Mr. Gilmour: I agree with a good deal of what the right hon. Gentleman says. Accommodation has been improved, but it is still not good, and troops often have to live in makeshift accommodation. They have to undertake particularly exacting duties, and they are separated from their families during that period. I think that four months is long enough but steps have been taken to improve the continuity of intelligence cover.

South Africa (Guided-Missile Defence System)

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: asked the Minister of State for Defence what assistance he has provided to the British consortium led by the British Aircraft Corporation in planning a guided-missile defence system for South Africa.

Lord Balniel: None, Sir.

Mr. Jenkins: Can the hon. Gentleman go a little further and say that if an approach is made by the people who are developing this project—it is called, I think, "Country 102", and the proposition is for nuclear and Thunderbird missiles to be used—he will turn it down straight away so that the people embarking upon it can stop their drawing board work and devote themselves to some more useful work?

Lord Balniel: No. As the hon. Gentleman knows, that is a hypothetical question. I can inform him that no commitment to sales in relation to air defence


systems in South Africa has been requested by the South African Government and none has been given to them.

Oral Answers to Questions — HOME DEPARTMENT

Detained Persons (Consultation with Solicitors)

Mr. Clinton Davis: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what memoranda, instructions or recommendations have been sent or given to police authorities concerning the rights of people who have been detained for questioning, or following arrest, to consult their solicitors.

Mr. Peter Archer: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what instruction or advice is given by him to police authorities relating to the right of persons detained to consult solicitors.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Richard Sharpies): In January, 1964, the attention of chief officers of police was drawn to the Judges' Rules and Administrative Directions to the Police. These deal, among other things, with the rights of a person at any stage of an investigation to communicate and consult privately with a solicitor.

Mr. Davis: I thank the Minister for his reply, but is he aware that, in what has become known as the Carr bombing case, at Barnet Police Station two men were detained for 24 and 48 hours respectively, 23 others were questioned for some period of time, all these people were subsequently released and many of them were denied the opportunity of seeing a solicitor? Is he further aware that the officer in charge of that investigation described the process of seeing a solicitor as "a legal nicety"? How is this consistent with the statement made to the House by the Secretary of State that:
It is an accepted principle that every person at any stage of an investigation, even if in custody, should be able to communicate and to consult privately with a solicitor, provided that no unreasonable delay or hindrance is caused to the processes of the investigation or the administration of justice by his doing so."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 18th March, 1971; Vol. 813, c. 1639.]

Mr. Sharples: My right hon. Friend stated the position accurately. It would

be quite improper for me to comment in any way upon the case which the hon. Gentleman has raised, which is sub judice.

Mr. Davis: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The hon. Gentleman has stated that the case is sub judice. The matters to which I have referred are not sub judice because these people were released.

Mr. Speaker: This is not a point of order for me. I am not responsible for Minister's answers.

Hon. Members: Let us have an answer.

Later—

Mr. Davis: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In a supplementary question which I put to the Minister of State on Question 30, I specifically referred to 25 people who had been detained at Barnet police station and subsequently released. My Question related to those people. In reply the Minister of State indicated that it would not be proper for him to consider the activities of the officer in charge of those investigations because the matter was sub judice.
My point of order is as follows. First, was it not implicit from the Minister's reply that it was not in order to raise the supplementary question which I did? Secondly, is it not quite clear that it was incorrect for the Minister to allege that a case involving people who were not being tried was sub judice? Thirdly, was it not a reflection upon me, particularly in my capacity as a lawyer, to suggest that I did not understand what the sub judice rule was? In those circumstances, would it not be right to ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw?

Mr. Sharples: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. If I misled the House and the hon. Gentleman I do, of course, apologise and withdraw. It is quite true that the cases to which the hon. Gentleman referred—the 25 people—are not strictly sub judice. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about that. I am advised, however, that it would have been improper for me to have made any comment about those cases whilst the other cases connected with them are proceeding because it is likely that the matters which the hon. Gentleman raised are likely to be referred to in court in connection with the other cases.

Mr. Davis: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I thank the hon. Gentleman for the way in which he has withdrawn the suggestion that was made. I am grateful to him.

Children (Witnesses of Character)

Mr. Clinton Davis: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department in how many cases in magistrates' courts, during the past 12 months, have children appeared as witnesses of character in cases concerning their parents.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Mark Carlisle): I regret that this information is not available.

Mr. Davis: Is the hon. and learned Gentleman aware that on 15th March at Staines Magistrates' Court a 12-year-old boy was brought into open court by the direction of the chairman of the bench, Mr. John Slagg, J.P., to witness the shame of his mother who was facing that court on a charge. Is he further aware that the chairman asked the boy:
Do you know why your mother is here today?
Is this not a grotesque misuse of judicial discretion, and is this not a case deserving of inquiry?

Mr. Carlisle: I am aware of the case on 15th March. The behaviour of individual magistrates is a matter for the Lord Chancellor, but in view of what the hon. Gentleman has said it is only right that I should say that I do not necessarily accept that the purpose of doing this was that the boy should witness the shame of his mother. I understand there is considerable dispute whether any questions were put to the child.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: I congratulate the hon. and learned Gentleman, and also my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Leicester, North-West (Mr. Greville Janner), on having become "learned". In view of the statement that has been made by my hon. Friend which the hon. and learned Gentleman has disputed, and the fact which has been elicited by my hon. Friend, would it not be for the satisfaction and the good name of the magistrate that there should be a statement of what happened so that we can judge the matter?

Mr. Carlisle: I do not think that there is any case for a statement. The conduct of a court in any matter is a question for the justices concerned. The chairman of the justices apparently considered that, in the interests of justice, he would like to see the child of this woman, who was present at court, before deciding what it was appropriate to do with regard to his mother. What I said was apparently in dispute is the question which the hon. Gentleman said was reported in the Press as having been put to the boy. I have seen a report which suggested that this question was not put in the way the Press implied. I do not think it is right to suggest that the magistrate did this with the intention of shaming anybody.

Mr. Greville Janner: Will the learned Minister be good enough to give instructions through the means open to him—never mind the facts of this case—that in future children will not be heard in open court in matters of this kind and that the magistrates, in the exercise of their discretion, will, if they think it will help them, see such children in private and not expose them to the unhappiness which this case has obviously brought about?

Mr. Carlisle: I am grateful to the hon. and learned Gentleman and thank him and his hon. Friend for the kind remarks which they have made about me. That is a valuable suggestion. It must be within the hands of the magistrates to decide whether they wish to see a person in open court or in private, and it is not a matter upon which I can comment as a Minister.

Immigration Cases (Members' Correspondence)

Mr. George Cunningham: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the average length of time taken for Home Office Ministers to reply to letter from Members of Parliament about immigration cases.

Mr. Sharples: Owing to seasonal and other factors affecting the volume of work, this would vary at different times of the year, and an average for any one time would not be a reliable guide. But I am well aware that on occasions it has taken an unduly long time to send a reply. Steps have been taken to reduce delay.

Mr. Cunningham: I welcome the last part of the Minister's reply. Does he


realise that the delay in answering this type of inquiry is much greater than the delay in answering other inquiries? This appears to be due to the slow and imperfect communications between the Home Office and diplomatic missions overseas. Will the Minister see whether that aspect can be improved?

Mr. Sharples: Yes, Sir. I appreciate that this is often the cause of delay. We are doing what we can to speed this up.

Mr. Clinton Davis: Is the Minister further aware of the delay which is experienced by many people who call at the Aliens Department in having their cases attended to? Is there not a case for employing a larger number of people in this Department?

Mr. Sharpies: The staff in the Immigration Department has been increased, but the Department gets something like half a million letters, 200,000 callers and more than 100,000 telephone calls a year. The Department has to do a very large volume of work.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: May we have an assurance that the political need at party conference time to say that the Government are cutting down the number of civil servants will not lead to a shortage of civil servants in some departments? I suspect—and I do not put the blame on anybody—that this is true of the Immigration Department, given the large number of people who call there.

Mr. Sharples: As I said, we are taking steps to try to improve the position. This involves a certain readjustment of staff.

Electoral Registration Officers (Members' Correspondence)

Mr. George Cunningham: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list the names of the 15 Members of Parliament about whose correspondence Home Office officials gave advice to electoral registration officers.

Mr. Sharples: No, Sir.

Mr. Cunningham: Is the Minister aware that, at the expense of considerable time and effort, I have extracted information that the Home Office is in the habit of providing advice to electoral registration officers on correspondence between them and Members of Parliament? At

the least, it should be the habit of the Home Office to tell hon. Members when representatives of the Executive have given such advice. Is the Minister further aware that I was informed by the electoral registration officer that my letter to him was being referred to the Home Office for advice? It is, therefore, highly undesirable that I should then be refused any indication of the nature of the advice provided by the Home Office.

Mr. Sharples: This practice has gone on for many years. It is open to an electoral registration officer to seek advice from the Home Office on technical matters and on the interpretation of the law. The responsibility in replying to the hon. Gentleman must be on the electoral registration officer.

Mr. Cunningham: I am not suggesting anything different, and the Minister knows it.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: Will the Minister say on what subjects advice is tendered by the Home Office?

Mr. Sharples: The subjects on which electoral registration officers seek advice from the Home Office relate to publicity arrangements, corrections of the register, printing of the register and technical matters of that kind. It would be quite wrong if electoral registration officers did not have a Government Department to which they can turn for advice on technical matters of this kind.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: If, for example, an electoral registration officer, who, I take it, is a law unto himself, is seeking advice on how he should collect the names for the register, what sort of advice is given? Is he asking for technical advice, and what is his relationship with the Home Office?

Mr. Sharples: He is an independent officer, responsible for his own decisions, but sometimes he can ask the Home Office for technical advice on matters of this kind. The decisions that he takes are his own.

Mr. Cunningham: Does the hon. Gentleman realise that the general guidance provided for electoral registration officers is available in the Library of the House of Commons, and, therefore, this entirely unofficial but helpful advice—not mandatory advice—provided by the


Home Office to registration officers is generally available? Is the Minister denying that he has said that when this advice is provided in a particular case in relation to correspondence with one hon. Member it becomes confidential? Is the Minister further aware that not one of his answers on this subject have related to the Question that I put? Will he try to deal with the question I asked; namely, why should it be necessary for this advice to remain secret from the hon. Members directly involved?

Mr. Sharples: Because the decisions which the electoral registration officer takes are his own decisions. In his Question the hon. Gentleman asked whether I would list the names of hon. Members of this House about whose constituencies advice had been given. It would be entirely improper to disclose confidential information of that kind.

Mr. Cunningham: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I beg to give notice that in view of the unsatisfactory nature of that reply I shall seek to raise the matter on the Adjournment.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRADE AND INDUSTRY

Consumer Protection (Parliamentary Commissioner)

Mr. McBride: asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether he will introduce legislation to appoint a Parliamentary Commissioner for the protection of consumers.

The Minister for Industry (Sir John Eden): I would refer the hon. Member to the reply given to the hon. Member for Huddersfield, West (Mr. Lomas) on 19th January by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Industry.—[Vol. 809, c. 253.]

Mr. McBride: Does the hon. Member realise that the position has changed since January, and that with the 50 per cent. cut in S.E.T. there is a need to watch prices and ensure that those that should come down do come down? Does the Minister also realise the need for overall price surveillance; that the Crowther Report emphasised this in terms of consumer credit; that in the United States and Canada public funds are devoted to this purpose; and that in Sweden the

office of consumer ombudsman has been created? Does not the Minister agree that the British consumer deserves the services of a similar official? Why does the Minister refuse to act in this matter?

Sir J. Eden: We are giving further consideration to the recommendations of the Crowther Commission. I am aware of the position in Sweden, but I believe that in this country the best protection for the consumer can be provided by the consumer himself. This matter is not appropriate for Government action.

Mr. Spearing: The Minister has said that there should be competition and that the consumer should judge, but does he not agree that when the article concerned is of a complex technical nature the consumer requires assistance to enable him to judge between competitive firms?

Sir J. Eden: If the consumer wishes to establish an independent arbitral body, it is a matter for him to put into effect. The Government act by means of legislation. A considerable number of Acts of Parliament are designed to protect consumer interests in general. Consumers in this country are sophisticated buyers who know best how to look after their own interests.

Oral Answers to Questions — ENVIRONMENT

Kirkgate Market, Bradford (Public Inquiry)

Mr. Edward Lyons: asked the Secretary of State for the Environment when he expects to publish the result of the public inquiry relating to the future of Kirkgate Market, Bradford.

The Minister for Local Government and Development (Mr. Graham Page): As I informed my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Wilkinson) on 5th April, my right hon. Friend hopes to announce a decision soon after Easter.

Mr. Lyons: Is the hon. Member aware that many people in Bradford have great affection for this Victorian Kirk-gate Market, which many thousands visit weekly, and that they are waiting with increasing impatience and great anxiety for the outcome of his deliberations? Will he seek to ensure that the decision comes as fast as it possibly can?

Mr. Page: I have said that it will come after Easter. It was a compulsory purchase order for only one-third of an acre but it was a key site in a development area and was bound to raise difficult problems. The decision will come as quickly as possible.

Oral Answers to Questions — PRIME MINISTER (SPEECH)

Mr. Barnett: asked the Prime Minister if he will place in the Library of the House of Commons a copy of his public speech to the British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers Association in London on 16th March on economic policy.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Edward Heath): I did so on 17th March.

Mr. Barnett: In the light of the Ford settlement, will the Prime Minister now accept that his policy of wage de-escalation in the private sector has failed? In view of the N.E.D.C. discussions that took place yesterday, is he prepared to reconsider the possibility of meeting and discussing with the T.U.C. its sensible proposals on a possible unofficial prices and incomes policy?

The Prime Minister: No, Sir, I do not accept that the policy of de-escalation has failed. I do not think that one could be expected to say that it had failed even when certain settlements have been made which are unduly high. The discussion that I had yesterday with the N.E.D.C. was a valuable one. I do not accept all the points put forward by the T.U.C. spokesman yesterday, but I have made it clear that we are always quite prepared at any time to discuss with the members of the T.U.C. or its economic committee any proposals for dealing with the question of inflationary wage settlements. There was a general desire yesterday that there should be a full discussion on this aspect of policy very soon in the N.E.D.C.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: I did not notice in the right hon. Gentleman's speech any reference to the undesirability of conspiratorial and collusive contracting in the electrical industry. Would it not have been a good thing for him to take part in a discussion of this subject in order to

draw attention to the undesirable exploiting of the public sector by the electrical industry which now takes place and has been universally condemned?

The Prime Minister: I did not deal with that aspect of the industry because I was dealing with broad issues of Government policy. If the hon. Member has specific cases that he wishes to bring to the notice of my right hon. Friend, we can examine them.

Oral Answers to Questions — NO. 10 DOWNING STREET (OFFICIAL FUNCTIONS)

Mr. Arthur Lewis: asked the Prime Minister whether he will give, for the most recent available date, the amount expended upon official functions at No. 10 Downing Street, itemising the expenditure in as much detail as may be convenient.

The Prime Minister: About £5,800 since the General Election.

Mr. Lewis: Has the Prime Minister's attention been drawn to the statement made by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster that, provided he has enough cognac and coffee, he can resolve any problem, including the problem of getting into the Common Market? Will the Prime Minister see that he stops having any cognac or coffee at No. 10 Downing Street?

The Prime Minister: My right hon. Friend was referring to the need for sustenance in the late hours during the negotiations in Brussels—an experience which I have shared in the past. He was not referring to functions at No. 10 Downing Street.

Mr. Jeffrey Archer: Can my right hon. Friend confirm that the problem of official functions since he has become Prime Minister is not that more people have been invited to No. 10 Downing Street but that more have accepted?

The Prime Minister: Since expenditure on official functions at 10 Downing Street in the last 10 months of the previous Administration was, I understand, around £8,700, compared with £5,800 in the first 10 months of this Administration, I am not sure that my hon. Friend's argument can be correct.

Oral Answers to Questions — Cabinet (Aviation Supply Minister)

Mr. Dalyell: asked the Prime Minister if he will appoint a Minister of Aviation Supply to his Cabinet.

The Prime Minister: As was announced yesterday in the White Paper on Government Organisation for Defence Procurement and Civil Aerospace, it is intended that the Ministry of Aviation Supply should be dissolved on 1st May. Ministerial responsibility for the defence activities of the Ministry will pass to the Secretary of State for Defence, while responsibility for the aerospace industry and civil aerospace policy will pass to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.

Mr. Dalyell: Has the Prime Minister any reflections about the alleged statement on aerospace attributed to a senior civil servant to the respected defence correspondent of the Daily Telegraph—Air Commodore Donaldson—to the effect that reorganisation means mostly changes in titles and notepaper? On this issue, does the Prime Minister also accept that, granted that the RB211 negotiations are delicate, there is nevertheless a residual problem for sub-contractors whatever happens as an outcome of the RB211 negotiations?

The Prime Minister: As to the subcontractors, I have nothing to add to what has been said by my right hon. Friend. On the hon. Member's first point, I have no evidence that any civil servant has made the remark that is alleged to have been made. I should have thought that in discussing these matters in the Press it was undesirable that remarks should be attributed to an unnamed civil servant. If remarks are to be reported it is important that the one who makes them should be named. If the hon. Member—who studies White Papers very carefully—has read the document that we published yesterday and the report which led to the changes in Government structure, he will know that the comment was quite valueless, because the changes are of an organisational character and are major changes.

Mr. Harold Wilson: While I agree with what the right hon. Gentleman said about Press attributions to unnamed persons,

would he confirm that responsibility for the RB211, which is an export order and not a military order, does now come uniquely under the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry? If so, is he aware that this meets a point we impressed at the beginning, that there should be a Cabinet Minister responsible in this House for all the pronouncements? Is he now in charge or is Lord Carrington in charge?

The Prime Minister: At this moment, while the negotiations with which my noble Friend Lord Carrington has been concerned are continuing he will retain responsibility. At the conclusion of the negotiations this responsibility will go, as the right hon. Gentleman has said, to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, who will have full responsibility, and who is, of course, in the Cabinet.

Mr. Wilson: I thank the right hon. Gentleman. Would he confirm that, apart from the immediate issue of the negotiations, it will be the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry who will be responsible for the industrial policy and all relations with the Receiver and the Rolls-Royce organisation?

The Prime Minister: Yes; as soon as the negotiations over the RB211 are concluded, that will be the position.

Mr. Wilkinson: Would the Prime Minister not agree that bringing the procurement and regulatory mechanisms of civil aviation under one roof in the Department of Trade and Industry and the further rationalisation by bringing procurement for defence under the Ministry of Defence are eminently sensible and reasonable measures very much overdue?

The Prime Minister: I think that successive Administrations have found this problem particularly intractable. I announced in the White Paper on Government reorganisation last October that we were having a special study made and hoped to reach a conclusion and implement it by 1st April, 1972. The study was concluded recently, and we have, therefore, been able to make the changes more quickly, which I am sure is for the benefit of everyone concerned in the Whitehall organisation and in the aerospace industry.

Mr. Ford: Would the Prime Minister say whether these changes are a forerunner of a general reassessment by the Government of support for the aircraft industry?

The Prime Minister: Obviously, this new organisation will be able to review the size, the scale and the activities of the aerospace industry. We are not at the moment putting in hand any new survey of that kind.

Mr. Whitehead: Can the right hon. Gentleman tell the House whether the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry will be answering to the House for the take-over of the assets of Rolls-Royce by Rolls-Royce (1971) Ltd. if such a take-over should precede the completion of the RB211 negotiations, whatever may be the outcome of those negotiations?

The Prime Minister: It will be the responsibility of the Secretary of State, but, obviously, it will be for him to decide whether he answers questions or takes pan in a debate or whether one of his Ministers does so.

Oral Answers to Questions — CIVIL LIST

Mr. William Hamilton: asked the Prime Miinster if he will now establish the Select Committee for the Review of the Civil List.

The Prime Minister: I am not yet in a position to add to the answers I gave to similar Questions from the hon. Member on 27th October and 25th February.—[Vol. 805, c. 25–6; Vol. 812, c. 842.]

Mr. Hamilton: Can the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that, as selected, the Committee will be representative not only as between party and party, which is a different thing, but as between individual and individual? Could I make my own personal application now?

The Prime Minister: I have no doubt of the hon. Gentleman's interest in this matter but I think he will agree that it is not my responsibility to appoint a Select Committee. The responsibility rests on the House, which has the opportunity to debate and vote upon it.

Mr. Dormand: Would the Prime Minister agree that this kind of Committee

requires Members with special knowledge and new ideas? Would he not further agree that my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) is ideally qualified in this respect?

The Prime Minister: The House has always considered a Select Committee of this kind to be of the utmost importance. It has usually contained senior Members of the House, but at the same time it has been widely representative of the different views. I imagine that the House will take the same attitude on this occasion.

Oral Answers to Questions — WEST MIDLANDS

Mr. Carter: asked the Prime Minister if he will now make an official visit to the West Midlands.

Mr. Peter Archer: asked the Prime Minister if he will make an official visit to the West Midlands.

The Prime Minister: I have at present no specific plans to do so.

Mr. Carter: Is the Prime Minister aware that that answer will be received with mixed feelings in the West Midlands, especially by the unemployed? Is he further aware that unemployment is rising faster than it has risen for 40 years? Is he also aware that if the RB211 is cancelled and if the Government fail to take early measures to stimulate the motor industry these figures will rise even more dramatically?

The Prime Minister: I am aware of the particular problems in the Midlands and of some of the views expressed by the people there, in particular of the desire that the I.D.C. policy should be modified or abandoned. That is not a view I can share. As to the motor industry, there is a home market which is being met more and more by imports of cars from overseas. I hope that the British motor industry will be able to meet more and more of the market instead of less.

Mr. Rost: Would the Prime Minister not agree that the best way to stimulate the motor industry would be to stop industrial disputes?

The Prime Minister: It is not for me to stop industrial disputes but I would


have thought that there could have been common agreement that the fewer the disputes in the motor industry the greater will be output and the greater its success overseas.

Mr. Roy Jenkins: While all of us deplore industrial disputes, is the Prime Minister aware that it is not industrial disputes which have been causing unemployment in Birmingham and the West Midlands recently? Will he bear in mind that, while I understand his attitude to and share it to some extent, there are great difficulties about having what has hitherto been one of the most prosperous areas of the country suffering from a rate of unemployment above the national average? What prospect can he hold out of bringing that rate down?

The Prime Minister: We have constantly discussed in the past the impact of wage-cost inflation on the level of employment. I find in discussions with employers and trade unions that this point is understood and accepted now. As to the general economic situation, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor gave his assessment in the Budget debate.

Mr. Faulds: May I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his wisdom in deciding not to visit the West Midlands? Does he realise, and I presume he does in view of his decision, that after the false prospectus which was his election campaign and all the "phooey" about prices, were he to turn up in my constituency there is a great danger that he might be lynched by the irate housewives of Smethwick? Can he understand my embarrassment in having to be the one to save him?

The Prime Minister: I have to disappoint the hon. Gentleman. I have not decided not to visit the West Midlands.

Mr. Greville Janner: Has the right hon. Gentleman considered the possibility of visiting the East Midlands, because in areas such as my constituency, where there was never any great unemployment, people are now beginning to become redundant in large numbers? Is he aware that there are considerable worries? Would he give his attention to this urgent problem?

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir. When I do make my plans to visit the Midlands I hope to visit the East Midlands.

Mr. Heffer: To clear up one mystery, could the Prime Minister tell the House why in the last few weeks most of the Questions put to him have been asking him to visit various parts of the country and the world—in one case the Windward Islands? Would he say why everyone is so anxious that he should be got out of London at the earliest possible moment?

The Prime Minister: Apparently hon. Gentlemen are so anxious to ask me Questions and this is the only way they can find of getting them on the Order Paper.

Mr. Moate: If on any of his official trips the Prime Minister should travel by British Rail, may I express the hope that he will not suffer from the delays and frustrations experienced at present by millions of travellers as a result of industrial action going under the spurious title of a work to rule? Would he agree that this type of industrial action is quite wrong? Will he encourage the Chairman-designate of British Rail to enter into longer-term contracts so that travellers can avoid being held to ransom by a small number of irresponsible employees?

The Prime Minister: I know that my hon. Friend's area is suffering particularly from the work to rule. I hope that the House as a whole would wish that this would shortly be brought to an end and would agree that there should not be any inflationary wage increase.

QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS

Mr. Arthur Lewis: I should like to raise a point of order on procedure, Mr. Speaker. If a request is made that the Prime Minister, who is now present, should answer Questions Q8 and 9, and as the Easter Recess is upon us and there is not time for us to have a statement for a week or so, would you grant the Prime Minister the necessary permission to make a statement now?

Mr. St. John-Stevas: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Perhaps I may give some ecumenical support to the hon. Member for West Ham, North


(Mr. Arthur Lewis) that you should concede that request.

Mr. McNamara: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. If we are to take all these, what about Q7, which is mine?

Mr. Speaker: It is not a matter for me. Mr. Rees-Davies.

Mr. Frank Allaun: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. The Prime Minister will know that I asked him a few days ago whether he would make a statement relating to the subject of the Questions, so there is some reason for saying that he must have prepared a statement which he could make now rather than later.

Mr. Speaker: These are not matters for the Chair. Mr. Rees-Davies.

TANKER "PANTHER" (OIL POLLUTION)

Mr. W. R. Rees-Davies: Mr. W. R. Rees-Davies (by Private Notice) asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether he will make a statement regarding the emergency measures being taken to avoid the danger of oil pollution arising from the discharge of oil from the tanker "Panther".

The Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Anthony Grant): We estimate that the oil slicks in the Channel to the north-east of Dungeness amount to several hundred tons of oil. It may have come from the "Panther", but analysis is necessary to attempt to determine its source. The Government now have five vessels spraying the slicks at sea with low toxicity detergents, and more vessels will be used if necessary. The local authorities are taking action to disperse the oil on and near to the beaches. We believe that these measures will prove successful. I would like to pay tribute to all personnel who are working so hard to deal with this problem.

Mr. Rees-Davies: I congratulate my hon. Friend on the measures which have been taken by the Government and those engaged in the dispersal of the oil. Thanks are due to them in that regard. I congratulate my hon. Friend also on the Amendment he moved last night to the Oil in Navigable Waters Bill, which should go a long way to ensuring that

incidents of this kind will not happen in the future, in that emergency action may be taken.
I have three questions to ask of my hon. Friend. First, will he be continuing with these dispersal measures at sea? One recognises that incidents close to the shore are for local authorities to deal with. Secondly, does he agree that this is a suitable moment to press other countries, in view of these incidents, to ratify the Brussels Convention of 1969? Will he undertake now to approach other nations in this regard, and also to draw their attention to the Oil in Navigable Waters Bill? Third, does he not think that this is a suitable time to review the question of territorial waters? If we had had a 12-mile limit we would have had complete control of the situation.

Mr. Grant: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his first remarks. I can confirm that we shall continue dispersal operations, certainly over the weekend and longer if it should prove necessary. We shall use every opportunity to press other countries to ratify the Brussels Convention. When the Oil in Navigable Waters Bill receives the Royal Assent we shall notify it to the Convention countries in the usual way, and hope that it will be a useful example. The subject of territorial waters is more complex. We have to consider world wide implications. But this is a matter at which we are looking, and I believe that the Amendments we made to the Oil in Navigable Waters Bill last night will go quite a long way to achieving the results we want.

Mr. Harold Wilson: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the House will have noted the more hopeful statement put out this morning about detergents helping to deal with the situation? If this is so, it has proved the success of the new detergent developed by the B.P. Company which many of us have seen tried out and is a very big step forward. But is the hon. Gentleman aware that while we welcome his Amendment to the Oil in Navigable Waters Bill last night, some of us find it a little hard to see why the Navy cannot take action outside territorial waters. Obviously, some people might object, but the "Torrey Canyon" was outside navigable waters, and well outside, yet the Navy went in within hours to take charge of the whole situation


there, and to the best of my knowledge no one from any other country objected. The Royal Navy acted on Government instructions because of the imminent risk of damage to all the beaches, not only in Cornwall, but right up the Channel and the Bristol Channel. Will the hon. Gentleman, without even waiting for the Bill to receive the Royal Assent, recognise that in a case like this we have an absolute right, however people may quibble about it, to put in the Navy to protect our shores and those of France and other friendly countries when this kind of disaster occurs?

Mr. Grant: The international legal position is by no means so clear as the right hon. Gentleman suggests, but undoubtedly the Amendment we made last night will provide a greater degree of clarification. As to the "Torrey Canyon", it was not until some ten days before the vessel was abandoned that positive action could be taken and in that time some 100,000 tons of oil escaped, whereas here we are dealing only with about 100 tons.

Mr. Harold Wilson: I am sure the hon. Gentleman did not wish to misrepresent me. I did not say that the legal position was absolutely clear, nor will the international position be any more clear by the unilateral passing of a Measure here. I said that in that situation we put in the Navy. As to the rather illegitimate difference the hon. Gentleman tries to point out, there is a lot of difference between a 130,000-tonner being stranded on a rock and a much smaller vessel being stranded on sand, and where, in the first case, the damage was such that it was impossible to pump out the oil without further loss of life, loss of life having already occurred when the tugmaster went down. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not try to make illegitimate differences, but will accept congratulations on the fact that the much smaller operation seems to be going well; and that he has introduced this Bill to assert what we believe to be the international position, and not to change it.

Mr. Grant: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. My aim was to correct an impression which seems to have got abroad in some places that this incident in some way presented a greater degree

of pollution danger than did the "Torrey Canyon". The position is not at all comparable. I say that in order to set at rest the minds of people who might otherwise be over-anxious. Putting in the Navy is always a possibility if another event of this nature occurred, but I think that the Amendment to the Oil in Navigable Waters Bill will give quite wide powers to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to take this action or any other necessary.

Mr. Braine: While I completely approve the action taken so far by the Government, may I ask whether my hon. Friend is aware of the risk arising from the rapidly growing oil traffic in the Thames Estuary itself, with these large resident population risks which recent oil fires and collisions in the river have underlined in no uncertain manner? What action is being taken by his Department in connection with proposals to add no fewer than three large oil refineries to those already there? Does he believe—

Mr. Speaker: Order. This cannot arise out of the Private Notice Question which deals with a specific problem. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to pursue these other matters he must do so by means of another Question.

Mr. Ogden: The Private Notice Question referred to the oil now threatening the South Coast as coming from the "Panther". The Under-Secretary of State said in his statement that the oil might have come from the "Panther". Yesterday there were reports that the oil threatening the beaches had been analysed and had proved not to have come from the "Panther". Can the Under-Secretary say which view is correct? Has his Department had any contact at all with the marine insurance people who, it would seem from certain reports about the equipment of the "Panther", were not doing the job they should have been doing?

Mr. Grant: On the first question, the analysis which our experts are carrying out on the oil is not yet complete, so it is not possible at this stage to say positively from where the oil is coming. We shall know this as soon as the analysis is completed. At this stage I cannot say more than that. There is conflicting evidence on this point.
Concerning marine insurance and the equipment carried upon the vessel, these are matters for the vessel's insurers, but we will consult them. As a nation in international circles concerned with international bodies, we are taking active steps to raise the standards of navigational equipment carried on all vessels.

Sir D. Renton: Is my hon. Friend aware that however much of this oil reaches the beaches, as happened in the case of the "Torrey Canyon", despite efforts to prevent it doing so, the help of thousands of volunteers would be of great use to clear it up? What preparations have the Government and local authorities made for making the best use of those volunteers?

Mr. Grant: I agree that this may be necessary. I reiterate that we are dealing with hundreds of tons of oil, not with 100,000 tons as in the case of the "Torrey Canyon". The removal of oil pollution on the beaches is the responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment. I have no doubt that he will take note of my right hon. and learned Friend's suggestion. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment is at the coast today and will no doubt be able to bring back a full report.

Mr. James Johnson: Will the hon. Gentleman clear up another small point? Did he say earlier that he was quite happy that United Kingdom legislation would cover the Government in the event of our taking action against other vessels outside territorial waters?

Mr. Grant: I can do no better than refer the hon. Gentleman to the speech which I made in the debate last night. The purpose of the Amendment was to enable an Order in Council to be made giving powers to the Secretary of State to make directions concerning an incident which occurs outside territorial waters.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Francis Pym): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a short business statement.
I understand that it would be for the greater convenience of the House if the

business for Wednesday, 21st April, and Thursday, 22nd April, were re-arranged as follows:—
WEDNESDAY, Supply [15th Allotted Day]: There will be a debate on Education on an Opposition Motion. Remaining stages of the four Consolidation Measures.
THURSDAY, Second Reading of the Shipbuilding Industry Bill.

Mr. David Steel: I hope that it will be in order on this business statement to ask the Chief Whip what happened to the statement which we were led to believe would be made today by the Prime Minister about the appointment of the Chairman of the Top Salaries Review Body? It is not good enough that a matter affecting the interests of the House directly should be announced by means of a Written Answer especially as so many Questions have been put both yesterday and during previous business questions to the Leader of the House?

Mr. Pym: It will be necessary for me to consult my right hon. Friend.

Mr. Thorpe: Mr. Thorpe rose—

Mr. Speaker: I do not think that I can allow any questions about business this week. This is a statement dealing with business when we come back.

Mr. Thorpe: Will it be during the week we come back that we shall have this announcement about the Chairman of the Review Body, or will it be made before?

Mr. Pym: I must make inquiries of my right hon. Friend. I imagine that it will be in the week that we come back.

Mr. Ogden: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. There is concern in the House, and the Government Chief Whip should realise that there is this concern, that matters which ought to be stated openly from the Government Dispatch Box are being given in Written Answers. This applies to announcements about chairmanships and a whole series of matters. It is not fair that the Government Chief Whip should say that he will refer to his right hon. Friend. At least he could say that he notes the feeling of the House.

Mr. Pym: If the Chief Whip does not know the answer, it might be as well for him to find out.

Mr. Heffer: On a further point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am sorry to delay the House. I find that the point raised by the Government Chief Whip earlier is dealt with in Question No. 161. As this refers only to the appointment of the Chairman of the Top Salaries Review Body, may I, through you, Mr. Speaker, ask the Government Chief Whip whether when we return we may have a further explanation so that the terms of reference can at least be questioned in this House?

Mr. Pym: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for pointing out that the chairmanship is being announced in reply to a Written Question. The terms of reference are not yet settled. They are a matter for discussion with the Chairman and through the usual channels. Because my right hon. Friend wants the whole House to be entirely satisfied that they are right, when they are agreed in due course they will be announced to the House.

COUNT OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Speaker: I wish to make a statement about the count of the House.
The House will remember that on Tuesday I undertook to consider the present rules regarding the operation of counting the House.
It is quite clear that if a quorum has not assembled at the end of a period of four minutes after notice has been taken that 40 Members are not present the House "shall stand adjourned". I take those words from the Standing Order, and they allow the Chair no discretion whatever.
During the four minutes in which the House is being counted the Chair has a discretion either to consider any point of order or to refuse to allow it. The duty of the Chair is to ascertain, during the period of counting, whether or not a quorum has been made, and for that reason there is no over-riding right to make points of order. The Chair's discretion in the matter must be absolute. I understand, however, that other aspects of the count are under examination by the Select Committee on Procedure, as I indicated to the House on Tuesday.

ADJOURNMENT

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Pym.]

LANARKSHIRE (UNEMPLOYMENT)

Mr. Speaker: Owing to the length of time which has been taken since 12 o'clock on these other matters, I shall slightly readjust the timings of the Adjournment debates.

12.19 p.m.

Mr. Gregor Mackenzie: I am grateful for the opportunity to raise a matter which is of considerable importance not only to the constituency that I represent but to the whole of Lanarkshire—that of increasing unemployment and short-time working. I am grateful that the Minister for Industry has taken the trouble to come and listen to the debate and to answer the points which will be raised.
The Minister will be aware that the figure for unemployment in Scotland now stands at well in excess of 120,000; that is about 5·7 per cent. of the employed population. In Lanarkshire, which is about the highest populated and the most industrialised county in Scotland, we now have an unemployment figure of about 14,500; that is about 4,500 more than there were nine months ago.
It is important to appreciate from these figures that they do not show the degree of short-time work that we have in Rutherglen; nor do they include the numerous and unfortunate redundancies that we have had in Rolls-Royce and—something that ought to be impressed upon the Minister—nor can they reveal the length of time for which people are now unemployed. This is exceedingly important. People are now unemployed for much longer periods than they were some time ago. Therefore, we think it right and proper to raise this matter in the House and to ask the Minister for his assurance that he is willing and able to do something about this problem.
We do not raise this matter in a grumbling spirit of pleading. We raise it because we genuinely believe that in Lanarkshire we have a substantial contribution to make. We have made a very


substantial contribution in the last century to the build-up of heavy engineering, steel and coal, and we still feel that we have a contribution to make to the economic well being of the community. Therefore, it is pathetic that men and women in Lanarkshire, many of them very highly skilled and talented, are not allowed to use these talents to the full.
We have been told over the past few weeks that Her Majesty's Government have taken a number of initiatives which they hope will stimulate industrial activity. But may I say to the Minister that we do not feel that these initiatives will fulfil our aspirations until we can see within the Department of Trade and Industry a very real enthusiasm for the regional policies which the party to which I belong has put into being in the last few years, and until we see a real enthusiasm and interest in regional matters.
We have been told in the last few days, in reply to questions, that the Budget will stimulate industrial activity. In my judgment, for what it is worth, the Budget is only a mildly reflationary Budget and it has given very little to the people of Scotland, to the people who are out of work in Lanarkshire. Unless, therefore, positive initiatives are taken by the Minister, the limited amount of growth that will be generated by the Budget will go to the most prosperous parts of the United Kingdom and we shall be left with what is now a new word in the Department, the spill-over, from the more prosperous parts of the United Kingdom.
We have also been told in the last few weeks that a great part of our county will be a special development area, and this pleases many of us. We like to think that at least there is this initiative on the part of the Government. We shall, however, want to wait and see how effective these special development area measures will be.
This was much heralded in the Scottish newspapers. The Scottish newspapers, the day after the Secretary of State made his announcement, said almost with one voice that this would mean about £100 million more for the West of Scotland. This was never the figure officially put on it by any member of the Government from the Treasury

Bench, but it was not without significance that most Scottish newspapers got the same figure of £100 million. To many of us this is rather a mythical figure. As the Minister knows, and as the answers which he has given will prove, the figure spent on the special development areas will only be as high as industrialists make it, by application.
If we read the philosophy of the Secretary of State aright, then we shall get in the West of Scotland only that amount which is the spill-over from the other areas. The previous Government, and particularly my right hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) when he was Secretary of State for Scotland, were conscious of the need to assist the people of Lanarkshire. My right hon. Friend appreciated that we had in our two basic industries of coal and steel a very serious run-down. Our coal seams were running down and our steel industry, because of technological changes, was changing in character. We therefore appreciated the very serious need for restructuring our whole industrial set up in the Lanarkshire area. We much appreciated my right hon. Friend's initiatives at that time in bringing extensions to the electrical appliance industry and in bringing the electronic industries and the newer type industries into our county. We shall always be grateful to him for that valuable help.
He was able to do this primarily because of the investment grants policy and regional employment premiums. We in Scotland feel very sad that we have been robbed of these grants and advantages. The Minister has the benefit of the advice of the Secretary of State for Scotland who will, no doubt, tell him that no matter what is said from the benches opposite, the S.T.U.C., the Scottish C.B.I. and the local authorities in Scotland are adamant in their view that investment grants were a very real attraction to industrialists to come to Scotland. We are very sad that we no longer have these advantages that we have enjoyed over the past few years.
No doubt, many of my hon. Friends in the course of the debate will raise other issues concerning other industries, but I should like to mention two in particular that affect my part of the County of Lanarkshire. I do not think it will


surprise the Minister when I tell him that the first industry to which I want to refer is the paper and board making industry which affects me in my constituency and my hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Mr. John Smith). Over the past few years we have had a loss of over 2,000 jobs in Scotland in the paper-making industry, and many of these 2,000 jobs have been in the County of Lanark.
This is a pretty serious matter for people who have given 30 or 40 years service to the paper and board making industry. The Minister will appreciate that these men who loyally served the industry in Lanarkshire and, indeed, throughout Scotland have skills which are peculiar only to that industry. Once a highly-skilled paper maker who has spent all his life in the industry is declared redundant, his skill is of no value outside a paper mill and he is seeking work virtually as a labourer. That is about the extent of the problem.
That is a pathetic reflection on our modern society. These men naturally ask one important question. They see in the City of Glasgow and other centres of industry a great deal of paper being used, and they cannot understand why the great paper users in the City of Glasgow and elsewhere find it more profitable to buy their newsprint and other paper from Scandinavia and, indeed, from North America, when there are paper mills not half a dozen miles from these great cities.
This is the point which was made to the Minister—and, from the Press reports, it appears to have been made reasonably well—by a deputation of leaders of the paper industry and S.O.G.A.T., the trade union concerned, and the Minister promised to look into these problems. We hope that in due course he will come forward with the answers. The deputation made the substantial point that there seems to them and to us on these benches to be very unfair pricing on the question of newsprint and paper bought from Scandinavia. It seems peculiar to us that there is only a very marginal difference in pulp and paper prices purchased from Scandinavia.
Much the same applies to newsprint bought from Canada. Many of us were disturbed to read reports that one of the paper-making companies in this country had recently decided to declare about 2,000 people redundant and to bring from Canada the newsprint which it needed to make up the deficiency. Having seen the Press reports, and having seen nothing to contradict them, I wrote to the Under-Secretary of State, and he was kind enough to reply to me yesterday. His reply disturbs me a great deal.
I had put to the hon. Gentleman that it was a false economy to allow such companies to go to Canada for newsprint, and I emphasised the serious effect that this would have on the number of people employed in our paper industry and the serious effect it had on our balance of payments. But the hon. Gentleman wrote to me to the effect that, although he understood that it would cause redundancies and there would be an adverse effect on our balance of trade figures, he considered nevertheless that these were commercial decisions best left to the individual firms concerned.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Will the hon. Gentleman forgive me a moment? I have now had an opportunity to look at the timing of debates today, and, for the assistance of those hon. Members who wish to take part in this debate, I wish to say that I think it reasonable that it should end at approximately 1.30 p.m. rather than at 1.15 p.m. as previously arranged.

Mr. Mackenzie: I am much obliged, Mr. Speaker.
We very much resent the sort of philosophy which lies behind the approach to these matters which the Under-Secretary expressed in his letter to me, and we hope that the Minister for Industry will persuade his colleagues in the Department to reconsider the answer which I had in those terms.
Over the past nine months, we have constantly pressed the Minister—and we asked his predecessors in office before that—to do all that could be done to help the paper industry in Lanarkshire. We have continually pressed that there should be an investigation into the whole set-up and that the whole question of Scandinavian prices and of importing newsprint from Canada should be examined. The


men I mentioned earlier have given a lifetime of service to the industry, and they are entitled to a lot more consideration than is shown in the answer which I received yesterday.
Our main concern in Lanarkshire—I think that it spreads throughout Scotland today, and this is one reason why I am glad that the Minister for Industry has decided to answer the debate—is for the future of the steel industry in our county. Lanarkshire houses many British Steel Corporation plants. We have strip mills, tube, general and special steel plants, construction plants, forges and foundries—all of them owned by the British Steel Corporation. In the whole of Scotland at present, there are about 27,000 people who depend on steel for their livelihood, and the majority of them are to be fauna in the Lanarkshire constituencies. We feel it right, therefore, that this matter should be ventilated in the House of Commons.
A few days ago, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry opened a debate on steel and the future of the industry in Britain. During that debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell (Mr. Lawson) very properly put, in a short and succinct speech, the problems facing the steel industry in Scotland. What worried us was that the Minister for Industry was unable in his winding-up speech to give any assurances about the future of steelmaking in Scotland. We hope that the only reason was that time prohibited him from properly examining our problem, and we hope that he will today be able to say something about both the short-term and the long-term projects planned by the British Steel Corporation in Scotland.
As for the short-term plans, I wrote about a year ago to my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Alan Williams), then Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Technology, and he assured me at that time that the short-term investments of the B.S.C. in Scotland were very much in the forefront of the Corporation's thinking. He told me that £100 million of the Corporation's money would be invested between 1969 and 1974, and he said that,
Scotland should at least maintain its position within the national total in the foreseeable future, with consequential benefits to Scottish steel-making areas.

In the last few months, however, we have become most concerned about whether that short-term programme of investment to the tune of £100 million is still to go ahead. We should like to hear from the Minister that the developments mentioned in that letter to me a year ago, involving Ravenscraig, Clyde-bridge, Gartcosh and a number of other plants and projects, are to go ahead. It is important for the Scottish steel industry that they do.
My hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and I are especially concerned about the future of the special steels division. The Clyde Alloy section of the British Steel Corporation operation at Craigneuk and Hallside employs between 3,000 and 4,000 people. It has for a long time been a proud achievement that we have had this unit, that it has been a viable and economic unit, and it has played, and still plays, an important part in the economic life of Our community. We should like to think that, no matter what the pressures coming from Sheffield or from the London headquarters, the plants at Craigneuk and Hallside will continue well into the future.
Further, on the question of special steels, we should not like to think that there are those within the British Steel Corporation who would seek to use the short-term recession—we hope that it is only short-term—to make closures or declare redundancies for the purpose of long-term nationalisation programmes. We hope to have an assurance from the Minister that he will use his good offices with the managing director of special steels to assure us that there will be no closures at Craigneuk or Hallside because of the recession in demand, and that further rationalisation plans will not be pursued in that way.
I come to the question of longer-term plans and developments. All Scottish Members of Parliament, and especially Lanarkshire Members, support those people in the British Steel Corporation who want to see substantial growth in this country's steel-making plants. We should like to think that the best hopes of the members of the Corporation, that steel production in this country should rise to 43 million tons, will be achieved, and will be achieved with the blessing of the Minister.
Those of us who have hopes that we shall achieve the target of 42 million—43 million tons have been a little saddened recently to read in the Press of campaigns by those who are much in favour of importing more steel at the expense of the steel-making capacity in Lanarkshire or, for that matter, in Wales or the Midlands of England. The answer the Minister gave his hon Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) yesterday, that the shipbuilding industry would no longer be under the same obligation to purchase steel within this country, will give little comfort to those making steel, whether the British Steel Corporation or the private sector.
If we achieve the target of 43 million tons, we hope that Scotland's share will be no lower than 4½ million tons. We on this side of the House were pleased to hear from the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland for Development, in a recent debate on Scottish unemployment and industrial activity, that it was the Government's hope that Scotland's share would be 4½ million tons.

Mr. George Lawson: That was by 1975. But it is very much less than we would expect for 1980.

Mr. Mackenzie: Yes, and we want to know that that 4½ million tons will still stand. In the speech by the Minister in our debate on the Scottish steel industry we had no assurances even on the 4½ million tons. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding me that that figure was to be achieved by 1975. We should like to know where we stand. There is much fear and apprehension in Scot land on the issue. The newspapers have said in the past few months that there could be no Scottish steel industry at all if we did not get some of the projects we shall demand in this debate, but I think that we were reassured by the Under-Secretary of State when he told us that it would be a nonsense to say that there would not be a steel-making capacity of substance in Scotland after 1980. We believe that the Government have stated the position clearly. All that we want the Minister for Trade to do today is to back up his hon. Friend's assurances in the debate.
There is not a branch of industry in Scotland today, including the Scottish T.U.C. and the Scottish Development

Council, which is not concerned, as I and my hon. Friends are, about the future of Scottish steel making. We believe that in the long term it lies with an integrated steel plant at Hunterston on the Ayrshire coast. There is not a steel-making plant being constructed anywhere in the world today that is not sited on the coast alongside deep water. When we argue in favour of Hunterston we are not simply plugging the case of the Scottish steel industry but are doing it because we believe it to be in the best interests of the steel-making industry throughout the United Kingdom. The case for Hunterston, which has been rehearsed in the House many times, is beyond dispute. The deep-water facilities that we can offer are beyond dispute, as are the savings, maintenance and capital costs of having a terminal there. So we believe that it will be to the advantage of everyone if we are given the right to go ahead with the plans for an integrated steel works at Hunterston, which will provide much employment for the people engaged in steel making in Scotland, and will be for the benefit of steel making in the United Kingdom as a whole.
But whilst we in Lanarkshire who are concerned about the future of steel making are enthusiastic about Hunterston, and have, to a man, pressed for its development, such a development will have very serious repercussions for the county of Lanarkshire. We have 15,000 to 20,000 people making steel in Motherwell, North Lanark, Bothwell, Cambuslang and Rutherglen. They would have to transfer to the coast, or we should have to find alternative employment for them somewhere in Lanarkshire. Our county council has over the years built up a stock of houses, schools, roads and other social amenities. It is a modern county and, we think, an attractive county. We feel with some justification that we are ready to play our part in modern development. We are anxious for Hunterston and shall continue to press the Minister on it, but we hope that he will appreciate that it will have serious repercussions for Lanarkshire. Perhaps we should have a survey of the industrial scene in West Scotland to see what is to be the future of Lanarkshire if our best hopes of having an integrated steel works at Hunterston are to be fulfilled.
We are waiting for the Government to make statements on many aspects of industry that affect our county. We are


waiting for a statement on steel and for a statement on paper, which has been promised. We are waiting for a statement on the RB211, which affects people in East Kilbride, and for a statement on the future of ship building, which also affects Lanarkshire. In all of these industries we have an important part to play. We hope that in all these industries we shall have the Minister's support in making progress on Lanarkshire's employment prospects.

12.46 p.m.

Mr. John Smith: I am very grateful that my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen (Mr. Gregor Mackenzie) was able to secure this topic for debate today. Those of us who represent Lanarkshire constituencies have become increasingly concerned about the growth in the number of redundancies in recent months. All those who represent Scottish constituencies have been concerned at the number of redundancies, now running at 6,500 a month, a jump from a figure of 2,900 last June. Within the North Lanarkshire travel-to-work area there have been 4,000 redundancies since then.
Against such a background, the Minister will not be surprised that the Lanarkshire Members are extremely concerned about the loss of job opportunities occurring within the county. My hon. Friend mentioned the difficulties facing the paper making and board making industry throughout the United Kingdom, and particularly in Scotland. I wish to draw to the Minister's attention the closure of the mill at Caldercruix in my constituency, owned by Robert Craig and Sons Limited. That mill is scheduled to close on 7th May this year. If the closure is carried through, 300 employees will be made redundant. That may not seem a large number compared with the many people involved in major redundancies in recent months in this country, but Caldercruix is a village of just over 2,000. The paper mill has been its staple form of employment for decades, and the people who work in it have passed on the skills from father to son throughout those decades. It is a close-knit community, with many cases of husbands and wives and fathers and sons working together in the mill. We have had an excellent labour relations record during that period. The whole history of the enterprise has been

one of co-operation between the management and the labour force.
Hon. Members will be aware of the consequences felt in mining communities when a colliery closes. My constituency has had to face many such closures since the end of the war, and on the whole it has done so with fortitude and a great deal of adaptability. But Caldercruix faces something probably even worse than the closure of a colliery would be to a mining village.
The community is still stung by the announcement that this centre piece of its life is about to be removed. Is it possible for anything to he done to avert or postpone the closure? Will the hon. Gentleman intervene with the owners to see whether anything can he done? If nothing can be done and the closure is inevitable, what is to be done to provide alternative employment?
I asked the Secretary of State for Employment what action his Department proposed to take following the closure of the mill. On 5th April he told me that it would
…make every effort to find alternative employment for those who are to become redundant…".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th April, 1971; Vol. 815, c. 37.]
He added that a job team would begin interviewing at the mill during the week beginning 19th April, following a special canvass for jobs in the surrounding area. I do not doubt the right hon. Gentleman's good intentions but one is entitled to be rather cynical about the prospects of the special canvass being productive. The surrounding area has been extremely badly hit by redundancies.
At the Airdrie employment exchange, 1,086 people were registered as unemployed in June, 1970; the figure is now 1,600—an increase of 514. At the Coat-bridge employment exchange nearby, 1,371 unemployed were registered in June, 1970; that figure has risen to 1,947—an increase of 576. Taking the two together—and Coatbridge and Airdrie are the nearest towns to Caldercruix—there are 3,547 people redundant in that area already. I doubt whether a special canvass for jobs for those to be made redundant in Caldercruix will be productive, because looking for a job in the west of Scotland at the moment is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
It would be disastrous if this cohesive labour force of 300 people, who have learned to work together and whose skills, as my hon. Friend pointed out, are linked to the paper trade, were to be lost for ever. I ask the hon. Gentleman to take note of the representations made to him by the employers and the trade unions in the paper industry and to see what can be done by the Government about the unfair pricing policies of our Scandinavian competitors.
It is sometimes said by the Government that redundancies are being created because of excessive wage demands. I took special care to investigate that in relation to the closure at Caldercruix. I was assured by the local managing director and by the chairman of the parent company, Associated Paper Mills Ltd., that that could not be said of the Caldereruix mill and that no excessive wage rises had been either demanded or granted. They had no complaint about the labour relations, which have been excellent for very many years. In many of these places, where there has been a family tradition of employer and employed, labour relations are often very good. The closure has nothing to do with excessive wage claims. I stress that so that it can go on the record.
It might be possible to save the mill if the Government could intervene in the question of the unfair pricing policies, but if that is not possible I ask the hon. Gentleman to review the provision of alternative employment in the North Lanarkshire area and to pay particular attention to the prospect of building more advance factories in the area. I know that the Department of Trade and Industry on the whole does not wish to build more advanced factories unless existing advance factory space has been filled. But it would be a gesture of confidence in the future if another advance factory could be sited in Caldercruix. The local people would see an opportunity being created for other work to come to their village, and it would be a gesture of confidence by the Government in the future of my constituents. I ask the Government to give serious consideration to that proposal.
If it is not possible to locate an advance factory within the village, then I ask them

to locate it nearby and also to consider mounting another programme of advance factory building for Lanarkshire. The redundancies in the county over the last nine months have tended to wipe out the gains we made during the previous several years by bringing in advance factories and by other policies.
If we are serious about providing jobs for those who are redundant, we have to communicate our confidence in the future by a programme of advance factory building and also by a programme of retraining on a much bigger scale than contemplated so far. I am thinking, for example, of the 300 workers at Caldercruix who have been trained for the paper trade. They may not get jobs in the industry again and they should be offered the opportunity to retrain for some other industry which may come into the area. I ask the hon. Gentleman to take up with the Secretary of State for Employment the possibility of introducing a much larger retraining programme in the North Lanarkshire area.
I turn to the situation in Shotts. Shotts is a community which has suffered greatly from pit closures in the past. In 1945, there were 19 collieries there; only one operates nearby today. The community has faced a great deal of hardship in the past and has done so with fortitude. It has met the challenge of changing times extremely well. Indeed, it was delighted when the last Government put an advance factory at the Stane site. But since that factory was completed last June, it has not, unfortunately, been occupied, and it stands as a monument to a good endeavour never followed up. I ask the hon. Gentleman to pay special attention to finding a tenant for it. Nothing would increase confidence and morale in the area as much as if that factory were occupied. In that area, unemployment has increased from 393 in June, 1970, to 518 last March. So labour is available for an incoming tenant of the factory.
I echo the sentiments of my hon. Friend about the steel industry. It is vital to the Scottish steel industry and its future viability that we get the ore terminal at Hunterston. The Secretary of State for Scotland states that he shares our concern. I hope that he uses his influence in the Government to show how


vital it is to the future of the existing steel industry in Scotland that we should get the ore terminal and the steel complex at Hunterston.
At the end of the day, the Government will ask what solution we propose to the problem. The Government should not be allowed to escape in this situation from facing the consequences of the policies they have adopted. I echo my hon. Friend's complaint about the effect that the abolition of investment grants will have and is already having on the prospects of attracting new industry to Scotland, particularly to Lanarkshire. We are convinced that the switch from investment grants to investment allowances was done to save money. The five-year review of public expenditure showed that in each of the years 1972 to 1975 a considerable saving will be made by switching from investment grants to capital allowances. For example, in 1972–73, the Government will save £345 million in investment grants at a cost of £235 million in capital allowances. Clearly, the switch has been done to economise.
We greatly regret what appears to have been a doctrinaire decision taken at a time when we need an increase of public expenditure in Scotland. Scotland, particularly Lanarkshire, benefits from a high rate of public expenditure, not only generally, but because that gives real bite to regional development policy. I ask the Government to get rid of the lame duck philosophy which has characterised their approach to regional development and the problems, I hope temporary problems, of some major industries, because we shall never be able to offer a proper future to the people of Lanarkshire unless we have a regional development policy, which means a policy operated by a Government determined to make it succeed and determined to put public money into backing up their confidence in the future of an area.
I ask the Government to reconsider their regional development policies in the light of the crisis situation which now exists in the West of Scotland. My hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen mentioned the 14,000 unemployed in Lanarkshire. The Glasgow Herald of yesterday pointed out that there were 35,000 unemployed in Glasgow, which is in the travel-to-work area of Lanarkshire. We now

have a crisis situation in Lanarkshire and the west of Scotland. We ask the Government to rise to meet that crisis by reviewing the whole of their policies and, even if it is unpalatable to them politically, to adopt some of the policies followed by the Labour Government which were successful in attracting industry to our area.

1.2 p.m.

Mr. George Lawson: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen (Mr. Gregor Mackenzie) on his success and compliment him on his enterprise in getting this short Adjournment debate. I associate myself with his thanks to the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West (Sir J. Eden), the Minister, for coming to listen to what we have to say. The hon. Gentleman knows that he is generally regarded as fairly doctrinal—he may be surprised to hear that, but I do not think so.
I remind him that a past Conservative Government took considerable steps in Lanarkshire and that Lanarkshire would have been in an exceedingly difficult situation if those steps had not been taken. I refer to the establishment of the steel strip mill at Ravenscraig. It was laid down at Ravenscraig, which is in my constituency, because of the intervention of a Conservative Prime Minister, Mr. Harold Macmillan. I am prepared to give credit where credit is due and to say that that was also true of the motor car industry. It was not my right hon. Friends, but a previous Conservative Government who brought the motor car industry to Scotland. I like to think that the hon. Gentleman is prepared to embark on such measures as the occasion demands, and certainly it calls for major steps.
When we talk of steel making in Scotland, we talk of steel making in Lanarkshire, for there is only one major works outside that county. Within Lanarkshire it is concentrated in my constituency. We have the Ravenscraig Works themselves, the Lanarkshire Works, the Dalzeel, the Clyde Alloy and the former Etna Works, now unhappily closed, all substantial steel-making companies.
The circumstances today are not such as to permit matters to be left to ordinary commercial judgments, to thinking in terms of the cost of a job, profitability,


which is usually a short-term consideration. I do not decry and never have decried profitability. I recognise that various types of enterprise are undertaken because it is expected that something will be gained from them. But there may be circumstances for a nation when such considerations are comparatively minor, when what requires to be done is so vast that no single person or group of businessmen can begin to approach tackling the problem. That is now the situation with the steel industry. The task is too big and too serious for the nation for decisions to be left to normal commercial criteria, and when I say that it is too serious for the nation, I mean not just Lanarkshire and Scotland, but the whole of the United Kingdom.
When one talks about steel making in Lanarkshire, one talks about employment. If the works in Lanarkshire are to close, there will be virtually no employment in the county and the area will become an industrial desert. That kind of thing cannot be allowed. The workers of the area are reconciled to seeing the industry slowly moving its concentration towards the coast. This is a process which has been going on over 100 years. It says much for the people and town council of Motherwell that they have accepted this development, that they understand that the industry cannot indefinitely be concentrated in Motherwell, for example.
However, we regard the establishment of the ore terminal at Hunterston as being necessary for the continuance of the existing industry quite apart from its development, and that development will be in the interests of the United Kingdom, not just the local area. But as the industry moves towards the coast, transitional arrangements must be made so that there is no serious dislocation among existing works. The move can be carried out over a number of years to the benefit of Lanarkshire, Scotland and the whole United Kingdom.
But this underlines the importance of the Government's intervention. With all the force at my command, which at times may not seem to be much, I emphasise that the job is too large to be left to normal commercial processes, too big even for the British Steel Corporation. The Corporation cannot find the money to pay for the kind of development which

we have in mind. I would not be so presumptuous as to quote figures to the Minister, who is already familiar with them, of course, and who will know that investment in steel making in the United Kingdom compared with that of other countries is so small that we are not even in the league in this respect.
I will not give the figures because they have been sent to the Minister by the Scottish Council for Development and Industry. They are most illuminating. The hon. Gentleman will no doubt agree that we must do much better than we have been doing. I will not argue whether this is because of the nationalisation versus denationalisation question. Investment in the industry has been calamitous. We cannot hope to remain an industrial nation of any consequence unless we are able to make our own steel sufficiently cheaply. Not only have we been investing at a much lower level than any other country, but we have been producing at an increasingly lower level. The production of crude steel, which is the sinew of a nation, has fallen.
We are told that the profitable section is special steels. We have substantial special steel units in Lanarkshire. Despite the fact that the largest part of the special steel section is still under private enterprise, our increase in production of special steel over the years has been appalling. It has been about 6 per cent. in the period 1960–69. This compares with the Japanese increase of something like 400 per cent. Every other country has been racing ahead in the production of special steels while we have been dropping out.
Tied up with the question of employment in Lanarkshire and its future is the future of steelmaking. We are at the centre of things. We make no special plea that we should be a steel-making centre for all time. We are prepared to accept that major developments will take place on the coast, we hope our part of the coast. All we are saying is that the Government must sort this out. This is the Government's responsibility. The other day, during a sort debate on the steel industry, I pointed out that the Government intervene on defence. No Government can leave the defence of a nation to any kind of hotchpotch commercial arrangements. It is a matter for


the nation and therefore for the Government.
Equally, I say that because the world has moved so quickly since the nineteenth century, no Government of whatever party can leave the steel-making industry to normal commercial considerations. This does not mean that we ought not to be thinking in terms of cheap steel. We can get that only by applying the best available techniques, developing the best sites, maximising the greatest measure of good will available among managerial and workpeople. If the hon. Gentleman can begin to do this we shall cheer him on. We will give the Government every support.
They cannot possibly leave this to the normal processes of commercial judgment or to the B.S.C., big though it is. The Corporation must at the least be given permission to go ahead with its plans, which are pretty ambitious, although I would say not ambitious enough. It is our understanding that the Corporation wants to build up capacity so that by 1980 it will be producing in the region of 43 million tons. We think this is very small beer compared with what others are doing, certainly compared with the Japanese. They are producing four times as much as we are.
The Minister could use his considerable influence to ensure that the Government will come in behind the B.S.C. and see that the most ambitious parts of the Corporation's scheme are carried out and that in Lanarkshire we are not confronted with any sudden decision saying that in the interests of economy half of the industry in Lanarkshire is to be killed. We could not stand that. We are ready to co-operate over a period of time in a smooth transition, knowing that the Government will be making efforts to retain and bring in new industry. I take it that it is not in the Government's mind to carry out this kind of sudden killing? If it is, it will be a very sad and angry day for the people of Scotland.

1.16 p.m.

The Minister for Industry (Sir John Eden): I am grateful, as is the House, for the moderate and constructive way in which the hon. Member for Rutherglen

(Mr. Gregor Mackenzie), supported by his hon. Friends the Member for Motherwell (Mr. Lawson) and Lanarkshire, North (Mr. John Smith), have spoken in this debate. I know that their moderation does not minimise their strength of feeling on this subject. I realise that they speak as they do because of their real concern for the situation which has been developing in Lanarkshire. I may not be able to answer all of the points that have been put to me but I can assure them that I will study their speeches carefully later and if there are any points that need a supplementary reply I will write to the hon. Gentlemen concerned.
The hon. Member for Rutherglen referred to the position of the whole of Lanarkshire. He will know that since 1945 the economy of the area, particularly North Lanarkshire, has been undergoing a pretty radical change. It is not something which has come about in the last few years and certainly not in the last few months. It has been happening progressively since 1945 and I want to put the debate into that context.
Coal mining has almost disappeared. There are three pits, none of which, I am glad to say, is in jeopardy. They employ just under 3,000 men. Many of the older iron and steel works have closed and modern strip mills and a number of firms, mainly engineering, have been introduced in the area. As hon. Gentlemen know, we have engaged in a review of the structure of development area status to determine whether any other changes were needed. The result of this study led to the creation of a number of special development areas and notably to that of West Central Scotland. This will help progressively over a period of time. I do not for a moment pretend that by changing a designation there will, overnight, be a transformation of the situation. It is not always fully understood how considerable is the full range of inducements which designation as a special development area provides.
Other facilities are already available in the development areas. These include free depreciation on new machinery and plant; initial tax allowances of 40 per cent. for capital expenditure incurred in the construction of industrial buildings; the regional employment premium, while it lasts, up to 1974; training grants for on-the-job training costs and training


courses; assistance through the Department of Employment towards the transfer of key workers; assistance under the Local Employment Act, 1960, such as the provision of D.T.I. factories, building grants at 35 per cent. and in some cases 45 per cent., loans at moderate rates of interest and removal grants. There are additional incentives for the special de-development areas, such as a rent-free period in a Department of Trade and Industry factory for a period of up to five years; operational grants at 30 per cent. of the wage and salary bill for the first three years; loan towards the balance of building costs.
That represents a fairly considerable package of inducements. I have enumerated them rapidly and in short form simply to get them on the record and in the hope that hon. Members will do their part, as I am sure they will, in giving these advantages publicity, for they are considerable and they will progressively assist in attracting new industry to the area.
The hon. Member for Lanarkshire, North asked me particularly about Government training schemes and advance factories. There are four Government training centres in Lanarkshire providing a total of 650 training places. A number of new training initiatives were recently announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment. These include payment of grants to employers in the development and intermediate areas who engage or retain workers aged 45 and over who have been unemployed for eight weeks or more; new short courses at lower levels of skill at Government training centres; and the Department of Employment would also be prepared to enter into arrangements with employers whereby they could use their spare training capacity to provide local training courses for the unemployed at Government expense.
The vocational training scheme has been extended. Under it, professional and executive staff of the age of 40 and over can in certain circumstances receive financial assistance for short courses with employers or to attend suitable courses at colleges of further education. Assistance is also available under the Resettlement Transfer Scheme to those who have no early prospects of obtaining work in their

home areas, to resettle permanently, or until work is available in their home areas, in jobs elsewhere for which no available worker can be found, locally. On 1st April this year the grants and allowances under the scheme were increased.
The Department of Trade and Industry has 11 industrial estates and individual sites totalling just under 700 acres providing employment for 24,300 people, two advance factories totalling 74,000 sq. ft. and 12 other factories totalling over 275,000 sq. ft., and 117 acres of land are available at various locations in North Lanarkshire. In the Glasgow group of employment exchanges, the Department has six established industrial estates which, together with a number of individual sites, provide employment for 26,000 people. A seventh estate is being progressively developed at Cowlairs and work has begun on another site at Dalmuir. There are four advance factories either built or under construction, 33 other factories and 95 acres of land available for new industry. In addition, three advance factories were recently authorised for Clydebank and the Department is considering other sites.
I apologise for speaking rather rapidly, but every effort is being made to interest suitable industrialists in the vacant premises. I come back to my main point, namely, the limitation imposed on the amount of help any Government can provide which arises from the shortage of mobile industry and of people willing to go to areas to take up the advantages and opportunities available to them.
Hon. Members have spoken of two industries in particular—paper and steel. The paper industry has been going through a very difficult period. Hon. Members say that the pricing policies of the E.F.T.A. suppliers have operated unfairly. The E.F.T.A. themselves make out the case that world market forces dictate their pricing policies. I have been looking into this matter very closely as a result of all the representations made to which hon. Members have referred. Fresh evidence has come to hand which seems to support the contention of the United Kingdom industries and I am studying it as urgently as I can. But, because of many grades of paper involved, the changing pattern of supply and demand and the


effects of substitute material, such as plastics, it will require a complex economic study to isolate the natural market effect from deliberate price manipulation. This is the point which is hard to pin down. But I assure hon. Member that if manipulation can be demonstrated the Government will be ready to make the appropriate representations.
I wish to say a few words about the steel industry on which the hon. Member for Motherwell spoke particularly strongly. I cannot give answers about specific works because decisions in these matters are primarily the responsibility of the British Steel Corporation. Proposals must in the first instance come from the Corporation. If I had answers which I could give the hon. Gentleman, I would not hesitate to give them. I do not want to mislead hon. Members or anybody outside engaged in this industry. The hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do that as a result of recent financial deterioration in the Corporation's performance the short-term review is engaged in studying the existing development plans. We have not asked for the deferment of Ravenscraig, but all these schemes are under consideration as a result of the study of the Corporation's financial position.
We hope to have an answer within six weeks, and we are pressing ahead with it. What matters is not that there is investment for investment's sake but that the costs of the investment projects are such as will be a reasonable guarantee for the profitability of the venture when it gets into gear. I accept what has been said about the great need for new investment in the industry. This need has existed for some years. None of us is trying to knock the industry or kill any sector of industry. Those are the words which the hon. Member for Motherwell used. I am sure that he does not expect me to give him any different answer.
I can give the absolute undertaking that our chief concern is to avoid a continuing drift into unprofitability because we want a secure, viable industry with a future. In the light of the rising costs to which the steel industry, like many others, has been subject, we must look afresh at some of the premises on which decisions were based. I hope that I have put it as reasonably and fairly as possible.

I accept that when we have a developing situation it is very much the Government's responsibility to help sort things out. This is why we are involved to the present extent.
The steel industry in Scotland has contributed very substantially to the benefit of the economy and of many engineering industries in this country. I would hope that it will long continue able to do so, but the exact proportion of investment, the exact decisions concerning the rundown of plant, are matters in the first instance for the Corporation. The hon. Gentlemen know that certain decisions were announced by the Corporation not so very long ago, and it will obviously be continuing a review of the availability of plant and the need to retain in being older sites and factories. This is because the Corporation, too, is as concerned as we are that the Corporation shall be a strong economic, as well as a widely, broadly based, industrial unit.
It announced right at the beginning of the existence of the Corporation what the sort of broad scheme was, and in 1969 made clear that it was planning to launch a sort of two-pronged attack for the rationalisation and the modernisation of older works, to improve productivity throughout the industry and to introduce more flexible working methods. It was then made clear that it would be aiming at a reduction of manpower by 50,000 in a period up to 1975. Some of the manpower reduction objectives which it then had in mind have not up to this point been achieved. I think that there is no doubt that it will have to press ahead with further closures. I am not specifying those in Lanarkshire or in Scotland, but, generally speaking, it is quite clear that we shall want to see that this industry is balanced and stronger in the future.
I know that I shall not have been able to reassure the hon. Gentlemen very much by the answer which I have been able to give, but I hope that they will take heart from the measures which have recently been introduced by the Government—from the creation of the special development area, from the measures announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I believe that these give enormous hope for the future, and for the development of industrial and economic activity in this


country. They are bound to have an impact, and a beneficial impact on Lanarkshire. They will take time to have effect, but, undoubtedly, we shall see over the months, the years, to come the progressive benefit of improving confidence throughout industry. I hope that, in the meantime, all those in the area, at whatever level of employment in the industry, whether at workforce or management level, will make the best possible efforts they can to take advantage of the opportunities which do exist.
Finally, I again assure the hon. Gentlemen that I shall do my best to study the record of their speeches and to follow up any of the points which I have left uncovered. I hope before very long to visit the area.

TOURIST INDUSTRY

1.34 p.m.

Mr. John Hannam: May I first of all, Mr. Deputy Speaker, thank you for giving me this opportunity of raising the matter of Government policy for tourism. This is a very important subject, which affects most hon. Members' constituencies in one way or another. I personally represent a constituency which is the centre of the largest domestic holiday area in this country, the South-West, but in this debate I should like to speak on a national basis, as someone who has spent over 15 years working in the industry, and several years on the Council of the British Travel Association, now defunct, and as Chairman of the British Hotels Federation.
Tourism represents our leading major growth industry, earning more dollars than any other, and it is certain to become, by 1975, the largest single industry in this country. It is already earning over £500 million a year, and by 1975 it will be bringing in from overseas £1,000 million a year and earning another £1,000 million from home demand.
However, it is not just a question of money. Tourism also represents a major environmental factor in the preservation and creation of amenities for the way of life of our people—weekend holidays, holidays such as the one we are about to embark upon, camping parks, wild life parks, National Trust parks, business trips

and conferences; they are all part of the structure of tourism.
As a service industry the hotels and tourist sector has suffered greatly over recent years through not being treated as an industry proper. There have been years of tax increases, loss of investment allowances, S.E.T., purchase tax on equipment, corporation tax. By the 1960s the industry was reeling under the cumulative effects of these impositions. Investment was dropping away sharply, and, despite the tremendous annual growth in the numbers of visitors, largely due to the sustained efforts of the old British Travel Association, our facilities here at home were lagging behind—far behind those of our rivals overseas.
In 1969 we had the Development of Tourism Act, which set out, belatedly, to change all that, firstly by introducing grants and loans for new developments started before 31st March of this year and completed before 31st March, 1973, and secondly by establishing a new structure of four tourist boards to supervise the tourism activities of Britain.
This Act stimulated a feverish burst of hotel construction, with everyone trying to jump on the bandwagon, planning permission or no planning permission, the result being that instead of an estimated £8½ million a year in grants being spent on new hotels and motels throughout the regions we have had well over £52 million in grants applied for in England alone to date, while there are still many projects to be accounted for. Pro-party speculators have seized on the opportunity of developing in London, and the result is, as Lord Crowther pointed out quite recently, that nearly 50 per cent, some £23 million, of grants has gone to London projects, producing a severe over-saturation of expensive luxury accommodation, when what was in fact required was a supply of medium and lower priced bedrooms for the lower-tariff holidaymakers. One can forsee a price-cutting war developing at some time in the near future when under-occupancy in London becomes more apparent.
However, we now see the termination of the grants and loans scheme and the reintroduction of investment allowances on the equipment and tools of the trade of the hotel industry. This, with the reduction in selective employment tax


and corporation tax, is very much welcomed by the industry. However, I believe there is yet a lot more to do.
A clear definition of Government policies for tourism in the 'seventies is necessary if investment and modernisation are to continue effectively after the end of the present grants and loans assistance. My intention in this debate is to focus attention on the main requirements of the tourist industry.
These requirements do not constitute outrageous or impossible demands on the Departments concerned but rather a demand that a framework should be established wherein tourism can develop in a natural manner, providing the facilities and the amenities which the leisure-seeking and business traveller requires.
Since December of last year I, in conjunction with my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-East (Mr. Adley), have been carrying out a survey of the attitudes to Government policy of the major companies and organisations in this country. We shall be producing a full report in due course, but in the meantime, because of the unanimity of view expressed by all those we have interviewed, I wish to state the leading priorities of those feelings towards Government policy in the hope that the Minister will take account of the points raised, although some of them, I know, fall outside the scope of his own Department.
The first priority in all cases, and one which has been repeated over many years, is the need for the industry to be recognised as an industry and to be allowed depreciation allowances on buildings and structures. There can be no strong reason, in the opinion of all those concerned with the hotel industry, why these purpose-built buildings, used as they are seven days and seven nights a week, unusable for any other commercial function, yet contributing so much to employment and to the income of local authorities, should not be allowed a normal allowance for amortisation on fabric. It has been somewhat disappointing to myself and to other hon. Members who have discussed this matter with Ministry officials to find that there is still a tendency to hide behind the out-dated smokescreen laid down by the Treasury—that it is impossible to define a hotel building. This is nonsense, and it was exploded by

the 1969 Act, which defined a hotel and laid down the grants and loans qualifications. It stated that a hotel had to have ten bedrooms, 25 in London, and had to be of a permanent nature, supplying breakfast and an evening meal and must be open during the main part of the season.
It is also argued that investment allowances on plant and equipment constitute 40 or 50 per cent. of the total expenditure. This is an exaggeration. My experience indicates a figure nearer 30 per cent., and we must remember that purchase tax is still levied on most of the working tools of trade of the industry. Certainly in 1973, when value-added tax will replace purchase tax and S.E.T., this situation will change, but it has been shown in the Common Market countries that in such a labour-intensive operation as hotels V.A.T. will prove to be a considerable tax burden.
If the Government are to create the right climate for investment on a long-term basis for new hotels, extensions and modernisation it is important that depreciation should be allowed from 1973 on capital invested in buildings, particularly having regard to the importance of tourism as a foreign currency earner. This type of incentive is particularly important in seasonal tourist areas, where it is essential, to make projects viable, that buildings are erected with a relatively short life-span, say, 20 to 25 years, so as to keep capital costs to a reasonable level. Depreciation allowances would also help to halt the deterioration in our older, more traditional holiday resorts, where obsolescence in older buildings has meant a general air of seediness and depression amongst what were once fine period buildings. If I mention party conference venues, hon. Members will understand my meaning.
Holiday areas, for example, along the South and East Coasts do not fall within the development areas. The development areas which are receiving aid are industrial and not tourist. Holiday areas desperately require assistance if we are to maintain the standard of our domestic holiday trade which will otherwise go abroad to places with more modern facilities, with balconies and bathrooms, even if sometimes no water appears. We still rely on the age-old attraction of the aspidistra, and creaking corridors, and


even the use of the Hoffnung attraction of a "French widow in every room" no longer makes up for the other disadvantages.
The first priority desperately sought by the industry is a tax allowance on buildings. If this policy were implemented, the technique of introducing "shot in the arm" hotel grant schemes would not be necessary or desirable. Tax reliefs would provide funds for hotel development that would in turn promote tourism. In the meantime, an extension of the loans scheme would help to tide the industry over.
The other priorities are related to Government strategy and simplification. We have inherited four major boards to administer tourism. As the intricate grants and loans supervisory work begins to come to an end, I suggest that we shall need possibly only two such boards. First, we should need the British Tourist Authority which, under the chairmanship of Sir Alexander Glen, has performed such a brilliant operation in selling Britain as a major attraction to the foreigner. This organisation would be responsible for marketing and political representation. Secondly, I suggest a combined England-Scotland-Wales Tourist Board to deal with our home tourist market and the regional structures and facilities. Again, I pay tribute to the work done by the teams in the existing boards in the short time they have been in operation.
We need not go on much longer with a four-part structure, with each board having equal status and able to make decisions different from the others, and each looking for specific technical direction from the Department of Trade and Industry which, with all respect to my hon. Friend on the Front Bench, is perhaps best equipped to exert this specialist control. Here is an opportunity to reduce the size of the Government machine and to end the "who does what" confusion in the public's mind.
The second most important priority in the eyes of the industry is the abolition of the training board, and its replacement by a small training advisory unit. The arguments against the Hotel Catering Industrial Training Board are overwhelming. It is cumbersome, slow-moving and top-heavy in administration. Incident-

ally, it appears that over 40 per cent. of the Board's income is currently devoted to administrative and direct services to the industry, at a cost of £1·3 million, which is not acceptable to an over-taxed industry.
The future rôle of the Board must he in consultancy and advice, possibly on a fee-paying basis. What is required is a small establishment able to co-ordinate the expertise within the industry so as to frame recommendations which can be adapted to a firm's individual needs, with a small staff of qualified people commanding respect in the industry.
Finally, a general strategy for planning and infrastructure is needed. I should like to see tourist development areas rather than the present limited industrial development areas. The present system of channelling assistance into what are often non-tourist areas can only lead to a wastage of our valuable resources. We also need a general direction on planning attitudes, as many anomalies exist. On the one hand, the Minister for Transport Industries insists that advance warning signs can be allowed for establishments which provide a 24-hour service with petrol. On the other hand, a hotel or motel on a main route applying to the Minister for Local Government and Development for planning permission, is allowed to build if petrol facilities are not provided with the accommodation. The motorist needs clear advance warning signs of services ahead—accommodation, meals, petrol and rest areas. Let us design and plan a standard advance warning sign for use on our main roads and motorways. Surely the time has come for us also to consider whether overnight accommodation should not be provided on our motorways.
There are many aspects of tourist policy which need to be stated but, as several hon. Members wish to speak I will conclude by summarising the needs of the industry. The first priority is for the industry to be treated as an industry and to be allowed depreciation on buildings. The second priority is the abolition of the Hotel and Catering Industry Training Board and its replacement by an advisory service. The third priority is a close examination of the structure of the four-headed tourist body with a view to possible simplification. The fourth priority is a redefinition of tourism


development areas to replace or encompass the existing industrial development areas.
Given this strategy for the 1970s, backed by the enthusiasm and efforts of the Tourist Authority and Boards, with such keen dynamos as Sir Mark Henig of the English Tourist Board, and fully supported by the hard-working seven-day-a-week industry, the Government could produce a self-sufficient, modern tourist industry closely concerned about the needs of the home holiday demand and care for the environment and at the same time attracting more overseas visitors and enticing them away from our overcrowded capital into the beautiful and historic regions of this country of ours. The reform of the licensing laws, the creation of a major conference centre in London, better communications with the regions—all these are before us. I hope that we shall soon hear a clear statement of Government tourism policy for the 1970s, which will allow this great industry to produce the amenities and facilities needed by the ever-growing numbers of tourists and travellers.

1.48 p.m.

Mr. W. R. Rees-Davies: We have listened to an able and wide-ranging speech setting out the needs of the tourist industry. I had always understood that Government policy was for the tourist industry to be treated as an industry. I agree that this is the first priority. I regard the grant system, which is to be phased out in 1973, as unnecessary when we have adopted the policy of treating the hotel industry as an industry. I hope that we shall have an opportunity to discuss the matter on the Finance Bill and that the Government, bearing in mind the new forward-looking measures in the Budget, will be able to say that when the grants are phased out in 1973 newly built hotels and extensions to hotels which are purpose-built will be entitled to the grant. I hope that we shall no longer hear the argument that it is difficult to define hotels, because the Development of Tourism Act lays down a clear demarcation between hotels, restaurants and other establishments associated with the catering industry.
Information from the Department of Trade for February shows an increase of nearly a quarter in the number of visitors

coming here—a figure of 182,000, which means an increase of 35,000. If spending continues at that rate the estimate that we shall earn over £660 million from tourism in 1971 will clearly be substantially exceeded.
That being the case, we have to face the problem that at the rate we are going London will be literally flooded with tourists within the next two years. The diffusion of tourism is vital to its future success. It is largely for that reason that the policy advocated by my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr. John Hannam), of having carefully selected development tourist areas, is essential. We must ensure that we have the necessary facilities in areas outside London—in coastal resorts, such as my constituency, and places like Eastbourne, and away in the West of England and even in the North, so that those coming here can be diffused out of the London area
The great need is medium-priced and low-priced accommodation, not only in London but outside, in cities and resorts where modern hotels, providing cheap accommodation, are required. To attract tourists to these areas it is necessary not merely to diffuse them but to secure attractive amenities. One of the really new upsurges of modern travel depends upon the convention, particularly the convention that comes here from abroad. We must create convention centres both in London and outside.
I ask the Government and the Department of Trade to make representation to ensure that the new Covent Garden site becomes the convention centre for London. It is the perfect site for that purpose. Such a site is badly needed, just as we need convention sites in other parts of the country for smaller conventions of agencies. The convention business in this country is still in its infancy. I agree with my hon. Friend about the general need to review the work of the Hotel and Catering Industry Training Board. It is top heavy, and too costly. An urgent review is required of that board and other boards, and I invite my hon. Friend to commend to the attention of his right hon. Friend the need to reconsider the position.
It is necessary to correlate the efforts of all the parties concerned in tourism. There are the B.T.A., the British Hotels


and Restaurants Association, the brewers, caterers' associations, and others. The Minister may be able to appeal to them to join together to provide one organisation, so that they may make the training boards truly effective. At present a lot of effort is being expended, but it is not concentrated. We must ensure that the regional boards are strong and truly representative, and that under their chairman they pursue a policy of promoting tourism in the regions. That will help to create the diffusion that is essential and, at the same time, ensure that the amenities and attractions of those areas are forcibly brought to the notice of travel agents, both at home and overseas.

1.54 p.m.

Mr. Kenneth Lewis: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr. John Hannam) on raising this very important subject. It is important both at his constituency level and over the country as a whole. No one who studies the subject can do other than recognise that we need, if not a Minister of Tourism then at least a Minister for Tourism.
The tourist industry is important to the national effort. It is a massive earner of currency. I should have thought that in the next two years we could go for an income from tourism of £1,000 million a year. The interesting thing is that for every person coming here from overseas and spending money in this country we are at least getting from him in currency the value of our export of Ford motor cars. If we lose the export value of some Ford motor cars because of strikes, or disruptions of any kind, we can regain it by persuading people to come here from abroad and spend their money.
Promotion is important. Nothing that is spent overseas on promoting Britain is wasted provided it is spent effectively. The national travel organisations both new and old have provided for Britain a good concept in the world. They nave put across a good picture of this country by amalgamating the old with the new in Britain. That is the right way to sell this country.
Once we have promoted the country we must provide the necessary facilities. I agree with my hon. Friends the Members for Exeter and the Isle of Thanet

(Mr. Rees-Davies) who have stated that we are short of hotels in the medium-price and low-price range. We are sending large numbers of people abroad on package tours, and equally large numbers of people in Europe and elsewhere want to come here on cheap package tours. These people do not have large amounts of money to spend but they have sufficient to enable them to stay here at moderately-priced hotels. It is no use our providing hotels only in the high-price range.
One difficulty that arises in winter, particularly in London is the black market in hotel prices. People go round and engage in a kind of Dutch auction. I should have thought that it would be of value to the hotel industry if the prices of hotels were heavily reduced in the winter, so that many more people from abroad would be attracted to come to London. If hotel prices were reduced the rooms would be full. It is vital that the prices should be reduced openly and not under the counter.
I also agree with my hon. Friend that we need a convention centre. The number of conventions is increasing. Many business associations have yearly conventions, some of which are held abroad when they could well be held in this country. The Association of British Travel Agencies has held its last two conventions abroad and is likely to hold its next one abroad also, because no centre in this country can take it. Whether we create a convention centre in Covent Garden or on the south bank of the Thames, I do not care, but it should be in London. If we had a proper convention centre it would attract conventions from abroad and also persuade conventions from this country not to go abroad. It would mean people coming from overseas getting together so that we had a share of international business and industrial meetings. People coming from abroad would be able to see what this country can produce, and that would create a stimulus to trade.
Last summer we had the deplorable situation of many students coming here and being unable to find accommodation. The Minister should try to co-ordinate the work of various bodies to try to ensure that that does not happen this summer. Schools, university buildings and similar places should be made available. I am surprised that some of our


public schools do not make their houses available for the purpose. A bad image is created for this country if students who come here cannot obtain reasonably-priced accommodation and have to sleep in the parks.
It has been of great value to raise this subject today. The capacity of this country to earn through entertaining foreign visitors is still not fully realised. It is growing, and will continue to grow. It has massive potential, and I hope that the Minister and the Government will put their weight behind that potential.

2.0 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Anthony Grant): I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr. John Hannam) for raising this subject and also for the contributions made by my hon. Friends the Members for Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) and Rutland and Stamford (Mr. Kenneth Lewis). All of them have expert and specialised knowledge of the subject. I have listened to their contributions with great interest. Tourism is an important element in our national economy and its importance is growing year by year. In 1966 earnings accruing from visits to the United Kingdom by overseas residents amounted to £219 million. For 1970 the figure was £433 million, nearly double. During the same period the number of visitors grew from just under 4 million to 6¾ million and we expect the increase to continue. The British Tourist Authority estimates that we shall have 10 million visitors by 1975.
This is a success story and results from the efforts of many inviduals and organisations both public and private. The Government have given and will continue to give assistance. A major contribution continues to be made by the Tourist Boards set up under the Development of Tourism Act, 1969. These Boards are financed mainly by Government grants. The British Tourist Authority has been notably successful in attracting visitors to our shores and the English, Scottish and Wales Tourist Boards are making a splendid contribution towards the task of encouraging the provision and improvement of facilities and amenities needed, not only for visitors from overseas, but also for the home holidaymaker.
The country boards have shown that they appreciate the importance of working in consultation and in close co-operation with local interests. Growth of tourism can help bring prosperity to a region and I am sure that, encouraged by the activities of the Tourist Boards, local interests will be ready to support, both financially and in other ways, the formation of strong and effective regional tourist organisations. I recognise that defining regions for this purpose can give rise to difficult problems but I am confident that satisfactory solutions will be found. I have no doubt at all that local initiative and enterprise is of crucial importance to the success of a policy of encouragement of tourism.
My hon. Friend the Member for Exeter in his interesting and well-informed speech made certain comments on the tourist organisation as such. He made the suggestion that perhaps the National Tourist Boards should be amalgamated into a single body. This raises the whole question of the machinery of government which we cannot discuss today. It should be borne in mind when considering co-ordination between the Boards that the National Board Chairmen also sit upon the British Tourist Authority Board. This helps co-ordination. The development of tourism in Scotland and Wales is the responsibility of the respective Secretaries of State to whom the Scottish and Wales Tourist Boards are responsible.
Very careful thought was given to the question of the right sort of organisation for tourism by the House during the consideration of the 1969 Act. It was concluded by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services, who was particularly active at that time, that a separate Tourist Board for England was needed. It was for this reason, when in opposition, that we pressed our Amendment providing for the setting up of the English Tourist Board. I have been impressed by the excellent co-operation that has developed between the three National Boards. At the same time, however, this is not inhibiting the development of distinct characteristics which will, I believe, lead to interesting variety in the sort of holiday facilities we have to offer. For my part I think that the new tourist organisation is doing a very good job and shaping up well.
My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Thanet rightly drew attention to the problem of London and the necessity to spread tourism into other parts of the country. Over-concentration in London and a few other centres of attraction is one of the problems. Regional tourist organisations can play a part in the task of demonstrating to the tourist that we have much more to offer for their enjoyment and entertainment in other parts of the country.
My hon. Friend also referred to Covent Garden. The G.L.C. plan is to use part of the Covent Garden site for a comprehensive development which would include conference halls, restaurants, etc. The cost is estimated at £5 million and it is proposed that the development should be undertaken in conjunction with private enterprise. The scheme will be considered during the summer as part of the overall plan for the development of the area so that if approval is given construction could begin as soon as the market is moved to its new site in 1973. I understand that the G.L.C. is considering proposals for the use of part of the Covent Garden site for a centre of this kind but that no decision has yet been taken. I am sure that it will take note of the point made by my hon. Friend.
The hotel industry has responded very well to the incentive scheme introduced in the 1969 Act. Indeed, the additional amount of accommodation which will become available will far exceed the original estimate. This was intended to be a short-term scheme and as has been made clear, while we shall honour commitments made in accordance with it, we shall not extend it.
We think that reduction of the tax burden is a better way to help the hotel industry than a general system of grants and loans. The reduction of selective employment tax announced by the Chancellor will be particularly beneficial to this industry. Modernisation of hotels must be a continuing process and it is here that the industry will benefit particularly from the new system of depreciation allowances on plant and machinery introduced in October.
My hon. Friend the Member for Exeter and others drew attention to the need for a depreciation allowance for buildings as well. I have noted what my hon.

Friend has said about a depreciation allowance for hotel buildings and I understand the arguments put forward. I am sure that they will appreciate this is a matter primarily for the Chancellor and I know that he is aware of the arguments. He will no doubt take note of what has been said in the debate. My hon. Friends will have an opportunity to pursue this matter further during the Finance Bill proceedings.
Along with the rest of industry the relief accorded by the reduction in corporation tax also announced in the Budget will help to make finance available for further improvements and developments.
Perhaps I could refer to the interesting point put forward by my hon. Friend on the question of tourist development areas. I know that this is a subject in which he takes a great interest and has studied carefully. I entirely agree that the present development areas are not necessarily areas of special tourist potential, although I would be the first to admit that the development areas include some wonderful country for holidays. Our decision to provide funds to assist the tourist projects in the development areas was taken in the interests of helping the economies of those areas which have special problems rather than in the narrower interests of tourism.
I am sure that my hon. Friend is right in thinking that it will be necessary to identify those parts of the country which have real potential for development. This is not an easy problem. It will involve careful and long-term research to find out what sort of things the tourists of the future will want to do and where we can provide these facilities. Our National Tourist Boards are conscious of this need and I am sure that they will be interested in what has been said today.
I am confident that, assisted by the measures which the Government have taken generally, the many interests concerned will be able to provide accommodation, amenities and facilities for visitors from overseas and for those of us who spend our holidays in Britain. I agree about the need to provide lower-priced accommodation. I was intrigued by the suggestion made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford that universities, and perhaps, schools, might be used to provide student


accommodation. I have noticed that this is done abroad a great deal, and further thought will be given to this interesting suggestion.
I have referred to the many interests concerned with this activity, because tourism is a matter of much more than hotels. The Tourist Boards are fully aware of the importance of the provision of other facilities and amenities, such as motels, youth hostels, camping and caravan sites, historic houses and stately homes, and festivals of music and drama, all of which have before them exciting possibilities of development.
Consistently with our general economic policies and relying on self-help and private initiative rather than subsidies we shall continue to encourage the expansion of tourism, and I have no doubt that from this source we can expect a growing contribution towards our overseas earnings. My hon. Friends may rest assured that we have noted with great care their many interesting suggestions, which we shall study carefully as, no doubt, will the Tourist Boards; and will do everything we can to encourage what is a vitally important sector of British industry as a whole.

CIVIL SERVICE (WOMEN)

2.12 p.m.

Mr. E. S. Bishop: I am very pleased to have the opportunity of initiating a debate on discrimination against women within the Civil Service. We must ask ourselves what are the criteria for assessing whether there is discrimination in the Civil Service. Unless the Minister and I have common criteria we shall get nowhere, and I should like him to say early in his reply whether he accepts my view.
Millions will claim, and I am one of them, that in modern marriage and family life partners should both be able to contribute or to have dual rôles, that of running their home and family life, and at the same time, if they wish, that of following a career. This involves each partner in a joint rôle domestically and outside the home, and society should so fashion its procedures as to make both rôles possible for men and women. If it fails to do so, and either deliberately or thoughtlessly hinders men and women in their wish to

live as unstunted and fully developed beings, discrimination is proved, and this should be a situation of top priority for change.
In a recent publication "Sex, Career and Family", Michael Fogarty, the Director of the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin, and Rhona and Robert Rapoport, senior social scientists of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations say:
What is important in the long run is not simply the removal of barriers to women's entry into a world of work which would otherwise remain unchanged but the positive promotion of new attitudes and practices on the part of both men and women, at work and in the family, to take account of the new fact of women's new high level careers…".
They suggest that action on race discrimination is building up a volume of experience of positive as well as preventive procedures which it will be well worth while to bring to bear on the problems of women's work. I believe, as do many others, that formal equality of right does not lead to actual equality of right between the sexes unless at the same time a profound change takes place in our social and industrial order, and in our outlook.
Fundamentally, few seek to discriminate, and where it exists discrimination is often the result of an attitude of mind. Women are still tied and bound and restricted by the nylon cords of tradition and out-of-date attitudes, and just as securely as their suffragette grandmothers who were chained to the railings in Whitehall. They and I, and many other men, too, look to Whitehall to set an example in breaking those chains so that men and women may grow to their full stature, which their Creator intended for them.
I begin my plea not by attacking the Minister and the head of the Civil Service, because I know that the Minister can bring a very strong case to refute allegations of discrimination. I can anticipate his replies in which he will remind me of the progress made in recent years in recruitment, pay and conditions of service, and so on, and this will give him the opportunity of telling the country just what thinking is going on, and what the progress is likely to be in the near future.
I was encouraged to read the speech made by Sir William Armstrong, head


of the home Civil Service in January, 1970, when addressing a meeting of the Women's National Commission, in which he anticipated some of the changes likely in the rôle of women within the Civil Service. I am aware also that the Civil Service was a forerunner in the granting of equal pay, much to the credit of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sower-by (Mr. Houghton) among others.
I want to discuss the issue for two reasons, among others: first, because I know that there is tremendous interest in the need for more and speedier reforms in reassessing the rôle of women in modern society and, second, because I believe, as others do, that the Civil Service, being State-run, should set an example and a lead to commerce and industry and to employers generally on the standards we might expect.
My main pressure will be brought on the need to allow recruitment of people on grounds of suitability rather than sex; to allow more women to expect full or part-time jobs in the more responsible work; to provide more facilities, having regard to family responsibilities, to allow them to work and make fuller use of their ability and their potential; to facilitate transfer of pension rights for those entering the Service or those wishing to leave it—and this is a most important point—and also to encourage far better educational facilities, making entry into the Service and, of course, the enhancement of career prospects, much improved.
Speaking a year ago about recruitment, Sir William Armstrong claimed that there was
…no discrimination in recruitment between men and women except for a very few jobs…
But it was admitted that
…most women civil servants are in the lower ranks of the service. Only 8 per cent. of the administrative class are women, while 44 per cent. of the clerical class are women.
He said that in July, 1969,
…here were 29 Permanent Secretaries, none of whom was a woman; only two out of 74 Deputy Secretaries were women and 9 out of 274 Under-Secretaries were women.
These figures show the extent to which there may be discrimination, or grounds for change for other reasons.
Sir William continued:
A similar pattern, with women clustered in the lower grades occurs in the executive

class where 20 per cent, of the total are women. No women hold the highest posts, while the executive officer grade, the lowest grade in this class, has 23 per cent. women.
On 22nd February, in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Wood Green (Mrs. Joyce Butler), whose concern about discrimination has resulted in her seeking to bring in an anti-discrimination Bill for Second Reading on 7th May, the Minister provided a list of a hundred or so jobs in the Civil Service for which women were considered unsuitable. Between us, my hon. Friend and I tabled a couple of dozen Parliamentary Questions asking the Minister to review the list in order to allow women to be recruited.
There has been quite unprecedented publicity about my concern that women might become Yeomen of the Guard. Some may think that in these days of many other problems an hon. Member has something better to think about; but, as I said, I have suggested many other jobs in Questions for review by the Minister.
Having now spent many hours looking through the five very thick volumes of the Fulton Report on the Civil Service to get the kind of atmosphere and climate or background of current thinking, I was rather struck by the outlook of the past in which there may still be some resistance to change. Indeed, in Chapter 1, paragraph 1, we are reminded:
The Home Civil Service today is still fundamentally the product of the nineteenth-century philosophy of the Northcote-Trevelyan Report. The tasks it faces are those of the second half of the twentieth-century.
Incidentally, the Northcote-Trevelyan Report was published in 1854.
As far as I can see, there is no reference in the Report to the special need to keep a much fairer balance between the sexes in manpower. The latest figures showing the numbers of men and women employed indicate that the Civil Service is still very much a man's world.
We all know and appreciate that India and Israel have enormous problems and that they have considered that women Prime Ministers are required to deal with them; but in Britain we have not yet got to the stage where we think that a woman is fit to become an ambassador.


The Diplomatic Service is woefully lacking in womanpower with only 47 women to 1,062 men.
Looking through the tables one sees a lack of balance in other ways, too. There are no women county court clerks. The National Savings Commissioners number 170 men and two women, even though most of us appreciate that housewives are quite good at being Chancellors of the Exchequer.
There is no custom of employing women in the Excise Department which has one woman compared with 5,489 men. The Immigration Service, where I think most of us would feel that women were particularly suitable and had a contribution to make, has 874 men and only two women.
Women can give birth to and rear children, but they are not considered fit to he calf-certifying officers of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. Only six women work for the Animal Health Inspectorate compared with 386 men.
There are only half-a-dozen women gas meter examiners compared with 135 men. I should think that it was time that the penny dropped that there should be a few more women carrying out this job.
As I said earlier, two women can steer their countries through troubled times, but on messengerial work we do not trust women to steer motor vehicles as motor vehicle drivers. There are 254 male accountants and only three women doing that job in the Civil Service. In the engineering disciplines, the levers of power are in the hands of 3,767 men and a mere 29 women. Here again, as one connected with engineering, I see no reason for more women not being encouraged to be educated and trained and given opportunities in engineering in which they can often hold their own with men provided that they get the opportunity.
One can go on making comparisons of this kind. I ask: why the arrogant assumption that men must run the State machine? Why are we allowing the potential which women have to offer to run to waste?
On education, which I suspect is largely bound with this problem, the Fulton Report may give the secret when, in

Vol. 1, paragraph 79, it says that the Civil Service aim is
to secure for the Service the best man or woman for the job, with the education, training and attitudes appropriate to it.
If there is no discrimination, the Minister will undoubtedly allege that women are nowhere in the running on these and educational grounds.
In reply to a Question which I tabled to the Secretary of State for Education and Science on 22nd March I was told:
In 1969, 198,139 boys aged 15 to 17, 39·7 per cent. of those in employment, received day or block release for further education; the corresponding figures for girls were 54,619 and 10·4 per cent."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 22nd March, 1971; Vol. 814, c. 63.]
In other words, in round figures, the ratio of those getting day-release facilities was 4 to 1 in favour of the males. In further and higher education generally the position is not much better, because there is a ratio of three boys to one girl getting those advantages. This seems an extraordinary situation for a country which can allege that there is no discrimination. Surely, if we think that women are fit only to carry out serf jobs, we should continue to gear our educational system to fit them for that rôle in our society and they will always be eligible for the unskilled or semi-skilled jobs. It seems that we have geared our educational system towards that kind of outlook and philosophy.
I obviously do not want to go too deeply into the educational system in this debate, but it is relevant to recruitment in the Civil Service. We must radically overhaul our educational system to allow the full development of the latent and special abilities of our girls and women so that they can grow into the fuller developed and mature individuals which they ought to have the chance of becoming. It is a wonder that, despite being denied the advantages of the males, women have managed to hold their own in this kind of situation.
Women's dual rôle should make their education and training of double importance. I should like to know whether the Civil Service College is making that challenge a top priority.
It may be that women civil servants are not easily come by, either because of inadequate educational opportunities or because they may appreciate, as many


do, the enormous barriers which they have to overcome for entry and advancement in the Civil Service. Equally, the Civil Service may not wish to risk spending on the training of women who may leave the Service on marriage or motherhood. But are not these problems challenges to be faced and overcame rather than reasons or excuses for inaction?
What about planning for such natural eventualities? What about retraining on re-entry after marriage and motherhood for a resumed career prospect? Why judge highly qualified women not only on their performance but on other female staff whose absenteeism rate may be higher, and bar their entry into higher grades and posts of greater responsibility?
I am sorry that the Fulton Report devotes only one page out of hundreds to the subject of women in the Civil Service, apart from a couple of pages of tables at the end. I am sorry that only about eight women gave personal evidence to the Fulton Commission compared with over 260 men. They may have done something as members of organisations, but those were the personal evidence figures.
The universities and school career advisers must, I feel sure, advertise and advise on opportunities in the Civil Service to encourage more applications from girls. The Civil Service must also recognise the changing pattern of marriage and family life, allowing girls to enter the Service and to re-enter later after having a family. I think also that the Minister must look into the situation of pensions and the transferability of pension rights for those entering the Service from other jobs and for those leaving the Service to go elsewhere.
Certainly I hope the Minister will remind his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science to make some radical changes in the education and training of women for, as the Fulton Report says, even though women do compete on less-than-equal terms with men, they are likely to be better qualified in the formal sense than their male colleagues in the same grade. If women are to enter and make progress in many professions where they are not conspicuous by their numbers, they often have to be far better than the men with whom they work.
The problem is not one of sex but one of identity. Whereas at the time when the functions of the Civil Service were laid down, when another Queen reigned, women were not expected to gratify their sexual needs, today women are not allowed to gratify their basic needs. That means growing into fully-developed human beings. I do not think, incidentally, that Dr. Greer's obsession with women's sexual rôle is germane to our discussion of this problem.
The challenge is to call upon all, in private and public industry, and the Civil Service, to a change of attitude. To discriminate is to devalue people. We can do that thoughtlesly by not challenging and changing outmoded attitudes. The Civil Service, with Parliament, can, for example, unchain women as the suffragettes were unchained from the railing 60 years ago. I suggest that the unchaining can start now in Whitehall.

2.32 p.m.

Mr. Ronald Bell: It might seem wiser to let what the hon. Member for Newark (Mr. Bishop) said lie on the Floor, but I think it right that somebody other than the Minister should challenge or disagree with what the hon. Gentleman said, because I have seen so often in the past that pressure groups, constantly exercising their pressure, year in and year out, even though they may be totally unrepresentative of public opinion, nevertheless begin to acquire an effect and influence the course of public affairs. Many of the absurdities in our arrangements derive from the unchecked activities of pressure groups.
The hon. Member for Newark has every right to his views. He has persistently pressed them in this House year after year, and it would be dangerous if the impression got abroad that he represents the House or that there is no adverse and contrary view. What worries me about the hon. Gentleman's views is that inherent in them there is this utter the total disregard and disparagement of the rôle of women in society as women. He takes the view, and he has said it in so many words today, that when a women is a wife and a mother, making a home, one can think of her potential as running to waste. I should be inclined to think that in the case of a woman Excise officer, her potential was running to waste.
There are a good many men who become old women quite early in life—

Mr. Bishop: Hear, hear.

Mr. Bell: —but not many women want to become third-rate men. The hon. Gentleman should realise that there are real distinctions between men and women—not merely physical distinctions but mental and emotional differences. The inequality of numbers in certain occupations which the hon. Gentleman has described simply derive from the fact that men want to do certain things and women, on balance, want to do other things. There is, of course, an immense area of overlap, and the degree to which there is overlap varies from one occupation to another. But when he looks at the Customs and Excise and says that it comprises virtually 100 per cent. men, I could point out that in the maternity ward of any hospital one would find that the occupants are 100 per cent. women. So in varying degrees in other activities of life we find this differentiation. It is fallacious logic which says that because women have babies, they are therefore peculiarly qualified to be calf-certification officers. I do not see the logical consequence there, with all respect to the hon. Gentleman.
It became clear as the hon. Gentleman developed his theme, as he has developed it on other occasions, that what he expects to see—I took his words down—as a matter of fairer balance is that, for example, the administrative grade in the Civil Service should contain an equal number of men and women, and that in the other grades the same should apply. If the hon. Gentleman analyses what he said, he will see that he assumed as a matter of conclusive presumption that whenever there is a numerical difference there must be some adverse and unfair discrimination.
This assumes two things—first, that men and women as such are equally qualified for all occupations, which is plainly not true, because they are different in temperament and in inherent gifts; women will be better in some things and men will be better in others. One should not look for numerical equality in all occupations. The other equally fallacious assumption is that men and women want to do the same things. They do not. What the hon. Gentleman and his col-

leagues in the feminist movement are always trying to do is to push women, as a matter of their political principle, into doing things which women are in no way deprived legally from doing but which they do not want to do to the same degree as men do. They want to do other things.
The hon. Gentleman might have instanced—but he did not—that the majority of teachers are, in fact, women. If we consider the primary stage of education we find that the proportion of those teaching young children is overwhelmingly women, which indeed is natural and what one would expect. Just as women give birth to children and are concerned with their early nurture, so they have not an exclusive rôle in the education of young children but a predominant rôle, and that gradually and proportionately varies as the children get older. To me that seems a very natural and sensible arrangement.

Mr. Bishop: When I made the point about the gross imbalance of numbers, I was not suggesting that there should be parity of numbers in all situations. I was talking about the need for equal opportunities so that people can do certain jobs if they so wish. The figures show clearly that this is not so. On the occasion when the hon. and learned Gentleman opposed my Matrimonial Property Bill, which was concerned only with giving both parties to divorces equal rights, I was concerned with equity between people, and he is again showing his dislike for fairness, especially as it applies to women.

Mr. Bell: I do not think you would be grateful, Mr. Deputy Speaker, if I were to embark on consideration of the Matrimonial Property Bill. Indeed, I think it would he out of order in this debate on the Adjournment of the House to refer to any legislation, although the hon. Gentleman, with his brief reference, has got away with it. Therefore, I will not attempt to answer that one.
What I was saying—I think that what the hon. Gentleman reinforces—is that he assumes from disparate numbers that there must be inequity. I challenge that. Disparate numbers show nothing of the kind in a free society, which is what we have, for, be it remembered, there are no legal impediments. The balance of


numbers in all these occupations shows two things, and two things only: one, the relative average ability of men and women in particular occupations; two, the relative preference of men and women in different occupations.
All that the hon. Gentleman can do in a society in which there are no legal impediments is to try to exercise pressure either by propaganda or by twiddling the knobs of administrative power, that is, by harassing my hon. Friend—though he is well able to defend himself—and in that way to try to distort the natural pattern. That is all.
The hon. Gentleman began by saying that what is needed now is positive procedures. That is what he meant—coercive or, at the very least, persuasive procedures to coerce or persuade people to do what, left alone, they do not want to do. This is the brainwashing technique. It underlay the race relations legislation which, as the hon. Gentleman knows, I opposed for the same reason. I believe that the law has no function to perform here. In a free society in which nobody is prevented by law from doing anything which he may reasonably wish to do and nobody is coerced to do things in the ordinary run of life which he does not want to do, people should he left alone. "Leave people alone" is not good Socialist doctrine, but it is good Conservative doctrine that people should be left alone to get on with their lives as they wish.

Mr. Bishop: Mr. Bishop rose—

Mr. Bell: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, for not giving way, but I have in mind the interests of other hon. Members who have subsequent Adjournment debates.
Those matters being so, to conclude as the hon. Gentleman did that to discriminate is to devalue is completely to misunderstand the rôle of discrimination. I do not know what my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary will say, but I hope that he will say that the Civil Service is, and will be, fair and equal but that, where there are relevant differences between men and women, it will not shrink from "discrimination".
There is nothing wrong in discriminating. It is the peculiarly human function of the mind to discriminate. One should

discriminate between everyone one meets upon every ground that one can detect, and any law which says that one should not do so is a bad law, because discrimination is always right. Of course, the attachment of disproportionate consequences to observed differences is another matter. But the process of discrimination is always right, and ought never to be disparaged or discouraged in any way out of muddled-minded doctrinaire obsessions with particular political objectives.

2.43 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Civil Service Department (Mr. David Howell): I am grateful to the hon. Member for Newark (Mr. Bishop) for the sincere and comprehensive way in which he presented his argument. I am grateful also to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell) for his contribution from a rather different point of view, and for his reminder—if I understood and can encapsulate his argument aright—that, whether men and women are or are not, or should or should not be, equal, they are not the same.
We have heard two valuable points of view expressed, and I am grateful for the opportunity to be able to say something, perhaps, from the rather narrower standpoint of the actual subject of the debate, that is, the employment of women in the Civil Service.
The hon. Member for Newark very fairly said that he expected me to refute the allegation of unfair and unreasonable discrimination in the Civil Service. I refute it at the outset. We can fairly say that the Civil Service today has reason to be proud of its employment record for both men and women. It has, in fact. generally been ahead of other employers in achieving equality in conditions of employment for men and women. Since the 1930s, women have been able to compete equally with men for entry into the general service classes, since 1946 all married women have been able to continue their employment in the Civil Service, and since 1962 women have had equal pay. In many fields outside the Civil Service, these conditions have not yet been achieved.
It is correct, as the hon. Gentleman reminded us, that some departmental


posts have not been open to women, and there are, or have been in the past, four main sets of reasons why this should be so. I shall return to these in a moment, but I emphasise at this stage that though some of these reasons obviously can be, must be, and are under review, some stand firmly on grounds of practicality and common sense.
The four categories of reason are these. In some cases, the experience or skill required in a job is just not available to women. This applies, for instance, to the printing trades and the building trades in which no women have the skills in the jobs involved, sometimes for reasons of union restriction, and sometimes for other reasons of practice and tradition.
The second category of reason is straightforward accommodation difficulties. An obvious situation here arises where a job involves seagoing in a ship or something like that.
The third kind of reason—I say frankly that this is much the most straightforward and, to my mind, perhaps the most obvious and common-sense reason—is that the work is heavy or involves rough conditions and is just not suitable for women.
The fourth kind of reason is that women may be unacceptable to staff, customers or clients. One has in mind here, for example, the situation in all-male penal institutions or something like that.
Those are the four sets of reasons which have governed the situation hitherto, though I emphasise again that these reasons have been reviewed at intervals over the years, they are being reviewed, and it is right that they should be under review. Moreover, it should be remembered that restrictions have been removed over the years from many jobs, so that we have now moved to the stage at which only a marginally small proportion of posts in the Service are still restricted to men.
As I say, there are certain practical difficulties in some institutions in removing restrictions altogether on the employment of women. Nevertheless, in areas of the kind which I have described, we are not content that the situation should remain unchanged or that the reason that things have always been so should be taken as a reason why they should remain

so. If the opportunity arises, and if women wish to fill these posts, we are anxious constantly to review these questions and see whether there are possibilities for the removal of restrictions.
During the last year, restrictions have been removed from quite a few jobs in the Civil Service. These include immiagration officers and the Customs and Excise officers to whom the hon. Gentleman referred. We are continuing this review, and we do not regard the fact that some posts have traditionally been filled by men as of itself alone justification for continuing to fill them in that way. Needs change, attitudes change, and the possibilities change. The Government's position is that in future there will have to be other and better reasons than those for the exclusion of women from particular jobs, so I expect that, as time goes on we shall see a steady reduction in the relatively small number of jobs now restricted to men.
I come now to some of the specific points raised by the hon. Gentleman. He referred to recruitment. I hope that he will accept a reassurance from me about this. Women have been eligible to apply for entry to the general Service and most of the Departmental classes since the 1930s, and almost half the entry to the executive officer grade at this time are women. The hon. Gentleman may like to know also that the proportion of women who gain entry into the executive officer grade is slightly higher than the proportion of women who have the educational qualifications for entry to that grade. This is evidence of free opportunity for entry into the Service. The situation is broadly similar for other groups in the Service. Women have represented an increasing proportion of successful applications for entry into what used to be known as the assistant principal grade, that is, the basic grade in the former Administrative Class. Last year 30·5 per cent. of the successful applicants for the Assistant Principal entry were women. That proportion was slightly higher than the proportion of women graduating in the previous year. Therefore, any allegation of bias in recruitment for the Civil Service can be firmly refuted by the evidence.
The evidence available to us on promotion has not led us to the conclusion that there is discrimination against women.


More women than men tend to decline promotion, particularly where it involves a move and they cannot, for example, for domestic reasons, meet that obligation. The fact that the proportion of women to men becomes smaller in the higher grades of the Service is explained by the fact that a higher proportion of women leave the Service for personal reasons. So a case cannot be made out for saying that the system of recruitment and promotion as a whole reflects a bias against them.
The hon. Gentleman referred specifically to the Diplomatic Service. There has been a woman British Ambassador, Dame Barbara Salt who was appointed to be Ambassador to Israel, but unfortunately was too ill to take up her appointment. Therefore, it is not strictly true to say that there has never been a British woman Ambassador.
I am not sure where the hon. Gentleman got his figures for the numbers of women in the senior reaches of the diplomatic service. Mine are that there are two Consuls-General, five Counsellors, 48 First Secretaries and 86 Second Secretaries, making a total of 141 women. That gives a rather fairer picture of the situation.
I believe that this picture shows that, while as a matter of indisputable fact the vast majority of higher posts in the home Civil Service and the Diplomatic Service are filled by men, that is in no way because of conscious or deliberate discrimination nor because there is bias in the promotion ladder. It is simply that women decline promotion, that they leave for various reasons, such as to get married, or that a smaller number of women come forward in the first place who wish of their own accord to involve themselves in the higher posts.
The terms and conditions of employment of women in the non-industrial Civil Service since 1946 have been the same as for men. Since 1962 women have had equal pay.
There is absolutely no distinction within the Civil Service between men and women for either Civil Service or external training courses. Both boys and girls have the same opportunities for attending the day-release courses.
There is no discrimination on pensions. I agree with the hon. Gentleman about

transferability. We recognise that that is very important, and obviously it is included in the general review of superannuation in the Civil Service which is now going on. But there is no difference, except that women who resign for reasons connected with their marriage can, if they subsequently return to the Service, count their previous service towards their pension. No one else can do that, so if a difference exists it is on the side of women in this case.
In the past some allowances have discriminated against women in money terms. One of these discriminations, on removal expenses, has been ended, and the others are all being reviewed.
The allegation of discrimination in the Civil Service does not stand up, when we examine the record, the situation and the kind of jobs from which women are now excluded. But I repeat that we are never satisfied that the traditions and assumptions of one period necessarily are valid in the next. Therefore, the matter is under constant review. Moreover, last summer the Committee on the Employment of Women in the Civil Service was set up, with far-reaching terms of reference. It is now at work, intends to produce a report in the, I hope, fairly near future, which I believe will be a valuable guide to us on these matters.
Even in some of the areas where at first glance it might appear that the heavy or rough work criterion rules out the employment of women, we are keeping the posts concerned under review. If women wish to take on such work, even though they are aware of the problems and difficulties, and if it is judged that it is a reasonable line for the Civil Service as the employer to take, all question of exclusion or restriction will be lifted.
In short, the picture we can present in the Civil Service is of an organisation which is taking the lead, which is setting the example. I believe that in the future—indeed, it would be quite unacceptable if it were otherwise—women will provide a growing share of the talent and ability of the Civil Service.

Mr. Bishop: I am grateful for what the hon. Gentleman has said, and I am glad that his general line has been in keeping with his party's manifesto, of which I approve on the need to get rid of discrimination, regardless of what his


hon. and learned Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell) says. How soon may we expect to see a charter of rights for women in the Civil Service? This is what I think many people are awaiting anxiously.

Mr. Howell: Nothing in the way of a charter or rights is planned, but when the report from the Committee is received by the Government we shall consider whether to publish it, depending on our judgment of its value and the value of publishing it, and that will obviously carry us forward. But we do not see any great value in charters. Charters can be written ad nauseam; the main thing is to create a situation in which opportunities are available and talent is used, whether of men or of women.

AMPHETAMINES

2.57 p.m.

Mr. Norman Fowler: Over the past few years there has been a growing concern about the use and abuse of amphetamines and a growing realisation that they have a very limited medical use. In this debate I should like to touch on some of the problems, and to draw attention to what I believe to be one of the most hopeful schemes for tackling the problem that we have seen in this country.
First, it is worth emphasising that the use of amphetamines brings with it considerable risks. I say this because even today, even after all the publicity that there has been, it does not always seem to be realised. Although heroin is generally accepted as a dangerous drug, there is still an assumption that the limited use of amphetamines is relatively harmless. This may spring from the common description of amphetamines as pep pills. But at drug dependence clinics many of the patients are treated because amphetamines are the major drug of dependence. For example, in the Nottingham drug dependence clinic almost half the patients treated during the year have amphetamines as the major drug of dependence.
Amphetamines are stimulants which affect the central nervous system. They include dexledrine and the mixtures like drinamyl, the old purple hearts, and the so-called black bombers. Far from being

safe, their use can lead to psychosis, and when this happens the user must be withdrawn. In the depressed period which follows there is the risk of suicide, and after-care may take six to 12 months. In some cases the patients will need continuous psychiatric supervision and treatment. In the words of the British Medical Association working party, which reported at the end of 1968, their misuse can produce mental and physical deterioration. In short, amphetamines are a problem to be taken very seriously.
There is one other point worth making. We sometimes think of this problem as being confined to young people. There is no question that it is a problem of young people and that many of them are introduced to the illegal drug scene by way of amphetamines. But it cannot be pretended that it is confined to them. Half the people admitted to psychiatric hospitals in the period 1966 to 1968 and who were shown to have used amphetamines were women. Half these women were aged over 30. This perhaps throws some light on the problem of the middle-aged woman using amphetamines, perhaps for purposes of slimming or to combat depression but who are put at risk as a result.
This brings me to the problem of prescription. The middle-aged woman does not get her amphetamines from the clubs or discotheques but through prescriptions from doctors. In 1969, 1,700,000 prescriptions for amphetamines were made in England and Wales. I realise that this was a reduction on the totals for 1967 and 1968, but by any measure it is still formidable. The effect does not stop with just those people for whom amphetamines are prescribed. There is also a risk that pills surplus to requirements get into the black market. There is even a risk that children may find them lying about at home. There is also the attendant fact that chemists' shops have to keep stocks. I shall come to that later, but I should say now that, although I am a parliamentary adviser to the Pharmaceutical Society, I am not in this debate stating a society view of the situation.
At this stage, I should distinguish between the ordinary general practitioners and the few rogue doctors thrown up in the last few years. Every profession has its rogues and the medical profession is


no exception. But it should be emphasised that it has only a handful. These rogue doctors have operated in various ways. The simplest way is plain over-prescription. Some doctors, particularly in London, have been prepared to prescribe amphetamines for all kinds of people. They become rapidly known to the users, who flock to them. Their conduct is utterly irresponsible and it is reassuring that in the last few years some of them have been brought to justice.
We should recognise the part which newspapers have played in exposing these men. In particular, the Daily Mail carried out a number of investigations with great care and success. We look forward to the Daily Mail carrying on this valuable rôle over to the new paper which it is to become.
But it would be a mistake to think that such doctors only operate from dingy surgeries and street corners. One or two are fashionable doctors with smart consulting rooms. I think, in particular, of the one or two doctors who specialise in slimming treatment and prescribe amphetamines for purposes of slimming. Here the pickings can be rich. One practice is reputed to have a turnover running into several hundred thousand pounds a year.
No, only do the middle-aged want slimming treatment, but also, of course, there is a demand from young girls of 17 or 18, straight from school or college, who also require this kind of treatment. What is objectionable here is not only that amphetamines should be prescribed but that those who take them are not told what they are. I have had one case referred to me. A girl of 18 went a couple of years ago to one of these doctors I have referred to for slimming treatment. She was given various tablets to take. Some of them are in the bottle I have here. It is only now that we find that quite unknown to her these pills are amphetamines—that is what she was prescribed. It is worth stating that authoritative medical opinion holds that amphetamines have no use in slimming treatment. They also have no use for the treatment of depression or fatigue. Their use is confined to one fortunately rare condition, that of narcolepsy.
Some of the black sheep in the medical profession have already been dealt with,

and it is my hope that the others will be dealt with when the Misuse of Drugs Bill becomes law. But that still leaves the problem of the perfectly legal prescription, and here I draw attention to a scheme started in Ipswich and now extended elsewhere which I believe is a very great step forward. Under this scheme, doctors have voluntarily agreed in these areas to restrict the prescribing of amphetamines. This amounts to a voluntary ban on prescribing except in very few special cases. They have worked together in co-operation with the local pharmacists and the scheme has had two major effects.
First, it means that the number of prescriptions has fallen dramatically. In Ipswich, for example, there are now no more than a dozen prescriptions a year for amphetamines. It means that there is no opportunity for tablets to get into other hands and into the black market.
Secondly, it means that, as pharmacists know that doctors will not be prescribing amphetamines, there is no need for them to keep big stocks. This is a major advantage, because break-ins to chemists' shops have provided a great source of supplies of amphetamines for the black market. This has been a big problem in some cities, including Nottingham, but the problem has been virtually solved overnight by such action in these areas.
The scheme has now spread far beyond Ipswich. I understand from the British Medical Association today that it is now in operation in about 30 out of a possible 200 areas. These areas include major cities like Glasgow, Liverpool and Nottingham, and also central London and areas like Hertfordshire. It is an excellent scheme and is worth supporting and encouraging by the Government in every way.
Clearly, legislation on drugs is important but that alone is not the answer. Voluntary agreements have already shown their worth. I refer here to the problem of methedrine and injectable methedrine of a few years ago, when serious abuse occurred. By the action of the medical profession and the Pharmaceutical Society, supplies of methedrine were confined to hospital pharmacies and the problem was solved by that voluntary action. I believe that the voluntary scheme which is now being undertaken by many doctors also has that potential.
The aim should be to extend these voluntary agreements so that the whole country is eventually covered, and therefore I ask my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State not only to give support to this valuable scheme but to give an undertaking to take all steps to assist and encourage its extension.

3.10 p.m.

Mr. Ernle Money: I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Fowler) for the chance briefly to intervene in this important debate and to pay my tribute to the work of Dr. Frank Wells, Dr. Roy Webb and their colleagues in Ipswich whose research and initiative introduced the scheme in my constituency in the first place. I mention research because one of the important things which Dr. Wells and his colleagues did was to look at the nature of amphetamines and the extent to which they were relevant to many of the diseases for which they were prescribed. Over and over again the same reason why they were being used as a palliative came out—that they had simply become something which hard-pressed members of the medical profession were being expected to hand out to their patients because their patients wanted something visible to be the result of a trip to the surgery.
The immediate result has been that Ipswich to all intents and purposes, with very few exceptions, has gone dry, at least of amphetamines, and a development resulting from that is that the medical risks, the social nuisance and the financial burden which my hon. Friend mentioned as being some of the great disadvantages of the over-prescription of these drugs have been significantly cut. It may also be to that, fortunately, that in the County Borough of Ipswich we can attribute the remarkably low crime figures over the last few years, as opposed to the situation in other parts of the country, such as Hertfordshire, where the manufacture of drugs of this sort has led to a constant series of cases both of breaking and entering and the misuse of drugs at both quarter sessions and assizes.
I hope that the Minister will be able to go from here to consider the broad question of over-prescription of all kinds of prepared drugs, because I believe that the lesson of the Ipswich experiment is

that in the long run so often it has turned out that drugs which have crept into the semi-conscious part of national use were not only not necessary, but sometimes downright harmful to the recipient and, secondly, very costly to the taxpayer. In a situation in which we have sometimes been described as rapidly becoming a nation of hypochondriacs, one of the most significant results of the restriction of over-expenditure would be that my hon. Friend's Department would be able to take a long cool look at the way in which the drugs bill has been growing and the risks extending from that.
I quote only one case to show the way in which amphetamines, for instance, have been exploited, not, as my hon. Friend pointed out, as a result of rogue doctors, but simply because of doctors getting so sick of patients turning up for whom no other palliative was acceptable that amphetamines were prescribed as the best way in which to get the patient off the doctor's back. Towards the end of last year, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) and I were involved at the Central Criminal Court in a case of murder in which the defendant had been receiving amphetamine pills at a terrifying figure, perfectly legally, because his general practitioner was getting so sick of him that the easiest thing to do was to write out a large number of prescriptions to cover a period of time.
He was being issued with what one might call a stock issue for 200 pills a week. The result was that the defendant found himself in the happy financial position of being able to market these things at the taxpayer's expense. When the opportunity occurred he found he was able to market even more than he was being prescribed. He took to selling perfectly harmless tablets such as aspirin wrapped up in silver paper as a means of extending the fairly extensive supplies which the taxpayer was producing for him.
The tragic end was that when two of his clients came to remonstrate with him a fight ensued in which one of them lost his life. This is an extreme example of the kind of risks involved. There is evidence that we are becoming a drug-hungry nation. This is not just to do with cannabis and even possibly heroin


but with the drugs mentioned by my hon. Friend. I believe that the initiative shown by some of my constituents, now followed by the B.M.A. in many different parts of the country, is something which will be a substantial protection to the inhabitants of the country as a whole. Equally important it will enable a substantial saving to be made, providing more badly needed funds for my right hon. Friend's Department to be spent on other things nearer to his heart.

3.17 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Department of Health and Social Security (Mr. Michael Alison): I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Fowler) and my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Mr. Money) for raising this problem of the misuse of drugs of dependence. I am glad to see in his customary place as usual when we discuss anything to do with the pharmaceutical industry the hon, Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Ogden). I feel secure in the double-barrelled representation of this society. Although the House has had occasion fairly recently to consider formally measures designed to regulate the misuse of drugs such as amphetamines, it is desirable that we should devote some time to considering other more informal and non-statutory ways of tackling the very serious social problems posed by the misuse of drugs.
It is undeniably a serious contemporary social problem. I entirely agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South said, that it has to be taken very seriously indeed. All of us who are associated with the problem must take the greatest care neither to exaggerate its scale, nor, in our anxiety to bring misuse under control, to advocate measures that might have the effect of inhibiting the use of valuable drugs for genuine therapeutic purposes.
Draconian measures of compulsion should be contemplated only rarely and then only after exploring every possible alternative. The problem here is well illustrated by the history of amphetamines, so well described by Baroness Wootton's Committee in its Report on Amphetamines and L.S.D. The House will recall that amphetamines had for many years a small, if not a particularly

significant place, in therapeutics, and my hon. Friend has defined that place.
This was before they achieved their present notoriety. The possibility of dependence had been noted as long ago as 1937 but it was not until restrictions on the prescribing of heroin and cocaine were contemplated as recently as 1967 that misuse of amphetamines, particularly of injectable methedrine, was adopted by addicts. The possibility that the Dangerous Drugs (Supply of Addicts) Regulations, 1968, which limited the prescription of heroin and cocaine for addicts to doctors specially licensed for the purpose, might lead to a wide extension of the abuse of drugs by intravenous injection and that amphetamines might be used in place of heroin was recognised by my Department even before the Regulations were brought into operation.
Our Chief Medical Officer wrote to all general practitioners and chairmen of general medical advisory committees and medical advisory committees of teaching hospitals in March, 1968, in order to alert them to this twofold threat and, at the same time, to remind doctors that
a substantial body of authoritative opinion holds that the use of amphetamines for the suppression of appetite is unnecessary and is largely ineffective in the treatment of depression".
This opinion was reinforced in November, 1968, by the British Medical Association's own working party on amphetamine preparations, which recommended that amphetamines and amphetamine-like compounds should be avoided as far as possible in the treatment of obesity, and should generally be avoided in the treatment of depression
as they appear to have no place in the modern treatment of this condition".
The fears expressed by the Chief Medical Officer in his first letter were borne out by experience in the spring and summer of 1968 when there was a rapid increase in the abuse of methylamphetamine by injection. So rapid was this increase that it became necessary, in the absence of statutory powers to control distribution, to have recourse to a purely voluntary arrangement—which both the medical and pharmaceutical professions fully supported—whereby supplies of injectable methylamphetamine were no longer available on prescription but were confined to hospital pharmacies and


made available through them to general practitioners who required them in strictly limited quantities. The Chief Medical Officer wrote again to all doctors in October, 1968.
Following this voluntary restriction of supplies, a few doctors began to prescribe powdered amphetamines. These doctors were visited by my Department's regional medical officers and, though contrary to their terms of service, pharmacists were advised by the Council of the Pharmaceutical Society, with the agreement of the General Medical Council, not to dispense prescriptions for powdered amphetamines.
Although abuse of amphetamines continued to pose a problem, the scale—which in 1966 was estimated to be less than that of the misuse of alcohol as reflected in the number of alcoholics—has gradually declined. An indication of the extent of this decline can be gained from comparison of the average number of National Health Service prescriptions for amphetamines dispensed per week in 1967, 60,000, down to an estimated 25,000 a week last year. I take my hon. Friend's point that, although this is a sharp decline, the number is still too great.
There is every reason to expect the decline to continue, especially since an increasing number of local medical committees are following the example set by the Ipswich Local Medical Committee in resolving to abandon the prescription of amphetamines altogether. As my hon. Friend rightly said, this self-denying ordinance is welcome for several reasons, not least because it is a purely voluntary arrangement.
I am glad of the opportunity of repeating the answer which I gave to the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) on 2nd February last, in which I made it clear that the Government welcome this voluntary ban and especially the fact that the example set by Ipswich has been followed by other local medical committees, including, I am glad to say, the Inner London Local Medical Committee. The House will also be glad to know that the B.M.A. is arranging a meeting in July to consider ways and means of extending the voluntary ban, Ipswich-style, and my right hon. Friend has accepted an invitation to address the meeting.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich asked me to give an undertaking that we propose to support and extend the Ipswich arrangements. Although the extension of the Ipswich experiment is welcome as a useful step towards bringing abuse of amphetamines under control, it should not I think be assumed that it is necessarily a complete answer to the problem. Ipswich is a rather special case. Apart from anything else, all the doctors get on extremely well together. Arrangements of this kind, welcome though they are, are not by definition mandatory on all members of the profession. There is always a minority—or there may be in places outside Ipswich—who are not prepared to accept the view of their colleagues. Nevertheless, it would be a pity if, in a natural anxiety to control the irresponsible actions of a few doctors, Parliament were to introduce measures which might unreasonably restrict the prescribing of the vast majority of doctors who prescribe drugs of dependence with the greatest care and discretion.
I conclude on this point by saying that we warmly support the Ipswich experiment. We hope to see it extended. My right hon. Friend will be alluding to it when he addresses the B.M.A. meeting. One has to recognise the fact that it does depend on the willing and active co-operation of a group of local doctors, and where they may be in substantial competition with one another, as may be the case in areas of more concentrated practice, it may not be so easy. But we are right behind them.
It has always been a principle of medicine in this country that a doctor should be free to prescribe any drug or medicine which he considers necessary for the treatment of his patient. This is a principle which one would not want lightly to abandon or restrict. The case for freedom goes further than that, for, as the Wootton Committee pointed out, it is a feature of the drug misuse problem that once the misuse of one substance appears to have been checked another immediately takes its place. Thus, restrictions on the prescribing of one drug may lead addicts to adopt another drug, which in turn will lead to demands for the imposition of similar controls on the prescribing of the new drug, and so on. It is vital that the


sudden upsurge of abuse of a drug which has wider therapeutic uses than, say, amphetamines, should not be subjected to restrictions which may be positively disadvantageous from the standpoint of the ordinary patient.
Experience of the misuse of amphetamines in recent years has prompted the introduction of the Misuse of Drugs Bill. The introduction of that Bill demonstrated, I think, what the Government, both the last Government and this, felt to be the inadequacy of the powers to take action swiftly enough to deal with irresponsible and reckless prescribing, particularly private prescribing, and I think that it was anxiety about this that led to the Misuse of Drugs Bill which, as my hon. Friend knows, has completed all its stages in this House and is now in another place, and which will certainly be on the Statute Book before long.
Regional medical officers of my Department have discussed prescribing patterns with general practitioners in the National Health Service, and there are long-standing arrangements for special informal visits to be paid to those doctors whose prescribing is substantially above that of their colleagues. In the last resort, where, having regard to the character and quantity of the drugs he has prescribed, there is prima facie evidence to suggest that the cost of a doctor's National Health Service prescribing is excessive, the facts can be reported to his local medical committee, and in those instances where the evidence suggests that a doctor's prescribing of drugs of dependence is grossly excessive or irresponsible, it is customary to report the facts to the General Medical Council. In the last year my Department has laid information before the Council in three such cases, and in one the name of the doctor concerned has been struck off the medical register.
In passing, whilst I welcome the concern which my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich shows about the danger of escalation of drugs costs, and their being a larger share of the National Health Service budget, or that it may grow, the drugs bill in fact, as a proportion of the total expenditure of the National Health Service, has remained static at about 9 per cent. to 10 per cent. for some time now.
The collection of evidence in these cases is, as my hon. Friend can imagine, a lengthy and time-consuming process. It is more difficult when the doctor is prescribing privately—and a good deal of irresponsible prescribing of drugs is private—and it is even more difficult where, as I understand is the case of the slimming clinic mentioned by my hon. Friend, drugs are dispensed directly by the doctor—I understand, in most cases without reference to the general practitioner of the patient who is attending the private practice concerned.
I say in parenthesis how warmly I applaud my hon. Friend's reference to the publicity given in the Daily Mail, and, I may add, the publicity given by Mr. Simon Dring in the Daily Telegraph, for the very reason that it may draw the attention of innocent members of the public, particularly young girls, to the fact that some of the drugs prescribed to them may contain amphetamines, though they have no idea that that is the case. I take my hon. Friend's point.
It is to expedite the handling of such cases that the Government brought forward the Misuse of Drugs Bill—in short, to enable my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to collect and analyse information, particularly about the private prescribing of drugs of dependence and to identify and deal with those doctors whose prescribing of these drugs appears to be irresponsible.
I am sure that the general approach which I have described—the Misuse of Drugs Bill, the voluntary agreements, trying to find a balance between not going too far and at the same time taking an effective position of control—is the right one. It not only ensures that all doctors receive up-to-date and authoritative information about the misuse of drugs generally and about the potential hazards of particular drugs, in a way which will enable them to bring an informed judgment to their own prescribing, but at the same time it strengthens our powers to identify and deal promptly with the irresponsible minority, while still preserving the freedom of the honourable and responsible majority to prescribe for their patients any drug or medicine which they consider necessary.

ROYAL ASSENT

Mr. Speaker: I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act, 1967, that the Queen has signified Her Royal Assent to the following Acts:

1. Industry Act, 1971.
2. Land Commission (Dissolution) Act, 1971.
3. Carriage of Goods by Sea Act, 1971.
4. Mines Management Act, 1971.
5. Oil in Navigable Waters Act, 1971.
6. British Aluminium (Saltburn Pier) Order Confirmation Act, 1971.

WORLD POPULATION

3.32 p.m.

Mr. J. D. Dormand: It is significant that a matter of such importance should be raised by a back-bencher, an Opposition back-bencher at that; and furthermore raised at an end of term Adjournment debate, when it should have been introduced by the Government during their ten months of office. The core of my case today is that the Government are not treating this subject with the urgency it warrants. The Minister will probably be aware that there was a debate in another place on this subject two months ago, the content and quality of which was of the highest order. It was a debate which could be commended to Members of both Houses.
I do not deny that the Government are aware of the problem and are doing something about it. They are represented on the Population Commission of the United Nations Economic and Social Council, the World Health Organisation, U.N.E.S.C.O., and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. They also participate in the United Nations Fund for Population Activities, and in 1971–72 they will be giving about £1 million for family planning and population control generally. The Government in addition have agreed to participate in the United Nations World Conference on Population in 1974. When one considers the magnitude of the problem facing the world today, it is clear that we and in fairness it must be

said many other Governments are not making the contribution which they should make. They are only shadow boxing.
To give the background of the situation I must quote some statistics but I will keep them to the minimum. In 1650 the estimated population of the world was 545 million. I am not sure how the population was counted in those days but I have found this from my researches. Up to that time population growth had been very slow. A hundred years later in 1750 the figure had increased to 728 million, by 1850 to 1,121 million and by 1950 it had more than doubled to 2,515 million. These are the most astonishing figures which have the gravest implications for mankind.
By 1961 the world population was estimated to be increasing at a rate of 1·7 per cent. If this trend continues it will mean that there will be more people in existence in the next 50 years than there were in the whole of human history before 1961. The increase which may be expected over the remainder of this century alone will be more than the whole world's population in 1960. The statisticians say that this is inevitable. I am not sufficient of an expert in these matters to know that, but they assure us that that is the case. The sources to which I have referred for my figures are generally in agreement.
If I take the last set of figures and relate them to this country it will make the position more vivid. We are assured by the statisticians on population that our present population of 54 million will increase to 67 million by the end of the century. That position cannot be avoided. This country's growth rate of 0·3 per cent. per annum is one of the lowest in the world. We have almost stabilised. To bring the matter right down to a question of daily occurrence, this represents an increase of 800 human beings a day in this small island. That shows the House that the situation is of some consequence.
This brings home to us more forcibly the need for more food, houses, hospitals, services, and so on. Before I came to this House I was the education officer for a local authority and I remember my panic, three or four years ago, when I discovered that the birth rate had increased rather alarmingly in my area. As a result, I had


to provide a new school for about 200 children. I place that on record as the most frightening and difficult thing that I have ever done. Relating that situation to this country as a whole and then to the world, we see how serious it is.
These then are the figures. There are two reasons for this situation. First, man has increased his mastery over the environment and, secondly and perhaps more important, medical skill has increased out of all recognition. Nowadays people in all countries live much longer, and the infant mortality rate has improved out of all recognition. In some countries—not so many as one would think—the birth rate remains very high, but I shall not dwell on that aspect because I am concerned mainly about the implications of the various factors.
The most important question whether it will be possible to feed such an increase in population. Many will answer, "Yes". They will do so on the basis that history has shown that when this kind of crisis arises man, from the sheer necessity of the situation, produces a solution. There is some historical evidence for this. But the topic that we are now debating is unique, and those who answer "Yes" to the question that I have just asked display unwarranted and dangerous optimism, involving the lives of millions of people.
I do not believe that there will be mass starvation, although I am not sure that anyone, however expert he may be in these matters, is in a position to be categoric about it. I believe that there will be localised famines from time to time, and malnutrition on a vast scale. These will be terrible experiences for the human race. I also believe that the effects of over-population will take more sinister forms. At worst, they will take the form of localised wars and, at best, the form of disturbances.
It is unfortunate that the example I quote relates to the tragic events now taking place in East Pakistan. The Minister may have seen the article in last Sunday's Observer which said:
The haunting nightmare of over-population has arrived.
That newspaper's distinguished Commonwealth correspondent Colin Legum wrote an article which brought home the

horror which may be repeated in other parts of the world. He wrote this:
East Pakistan is the first place on earth where the haunting nightmare of the population explosion has already become a reality. It lies at the root of this crisis. The Bengalis are packed 1,200–1,500 per square mile compared with the 600 density figure of Belgium, the world's next most heavily populated area. Their numbers increase by 6,000 a day.
He goes on to tell the most astonishing fact. The half million souls who perished in the East Pakistan floods last November were replaced in number with in three months of that disaster taking place.
Who can fail to be moved by such a terrifying story? Who can deny that this is one of the two or three major problems facing mankind and who can deny the need for immediate action? John Donne's words were never more apt than in this context:
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
This is everyone's concern, the concern of every Government in the world. It is a fact that the biggest problems of population growth are in the under-developed countries, which adds to the difficulties of the richer countries who in my view have a moral responsibility to help. Direct aid from the richer countries to the poorer countries will be regarded, however incorrectly, with the gravest suspicion. Some of the suspicions might be well-founded in view of the motives which have been produced by some of the so-called developed countries.
I submit that the rôle of the United Nations in this matter or any of the international agencies is of vital importance. I would like to place on record the leadership given by the World Bank on this question of over-population and in particular the leadership shown by Robert McNamara, President of the World Bank. He is perhaps the world figure showing the greatest awareness of this problem. The channelling of aid through the international agencies should do much to allay the suspicions of the recently independent countries. As an American senator is alleged to have said, we do not see "World Bank Go Home" chalked on the walls.
The international agencies have the prime task of producing more food and new types of food. I need not dwell on


the magnificent work being done by some scientists notably Dr. Borlang. When we think that the rice yield per acre in India is less than one-third of that in Japan we begin to see the enormity of the problem. Research is slow and expensive and the British Government should give till it hurts. We have a special expertise not to say compassion and can make a vital contribution, a unique contribution, to this problem.
It seems inevitable that any solution to the problem of increasing population must include birth control. It is evident that this will give rise to further problems by way of ideological and religious objections to family planning. It goes without saying that such views must be respected but if some compromise cannot be reached the future is indeed bleak.
It is for these reasons in particular that I welcome the holding of the world population conference in 1974. Family planning must inevitably be one of the main items on the agenda at that conference, and one hopes that at least the basic differences will be solved, however optimistic that may seem at the moment.
The Minister will remember that when I put down a Parliamentary Question to him two or three weeks ago asking whether he would seek to have the Government organise or initiate a world conference on the topic, his reply was that one was already arranged for 1974. That reply exactly illustrates my point that the Government are not showing the urgency they should. Why 1974? Why not this year or, at the latest, next year? I realise that international conferences must be organised even from the physical point of view, quite apart from the papers, and so on, that go to make up such a conference, but to accept that a problem like this can be dealt with in three years' time shows a great lack of urgency.
I recently saw the Secretary of State for the Environment on our North-East television channel, when he said:
'When you know something has to be done, the sooner it is done the better.
Those are wise words, in my view, and I hope that the Minister will have a chat with his colleague to see whether they can be related to this problem, because there seems to be an awareness of a

problem not only here but in many countries, but little seems to be done about it.
I make the plea to the Government to ignore the increasing clamour of voices calling for the abolition of family allowances. The argument that such allowances encourage the population explosion is quite without foundation. In those countries which have such welfare facilities as, for instance, hospital care, maternity allowances, medical care—and family allowances themselves—the families are no greater than they are in, notably, the United States of America where the allowances are not made.
It is more than 30 years since Lord Boyd-Orr made my hair stand on end with some of his predictions of what might come about because of the population explosion. If little else has happened since that time, at least the world is aware that there is a major problem to be solved. In the last decade, some 40 countries have either supported or adopted a population policy or programme. There are at least six international organisations dealing with the problem, and this year the United Nations has recommended the setting up of a world population institute—in my view, a significant proposal. One hears whispers, and perhaps the Minister will say something, that the Government are interested in having the institute in this country. That would be more than a gesture that the Government and the country are prepared to have a physical symbol of their concern about the expanding world population.
However laudable the activities of these bodies are one comes back every time to the need to devote more resources to them. The world population programme at the moment requires 170 million dollars: its currnt revenue falls far from that at 35 million dollars. Mr. Macnamara said recently that if only there were only a 5 per cent. shift from arms to development we would be within sight of the Pearson target for development assistance.
The British Government should take the lead in trying to achieve this shift. As I have said, our aid for family planning and population control will amount to £1 million for 1971–72 out of a total of £245 million. I am aware that that


£1 million represents double the present contribution, and I congratulate the Minister and the Government on that large increase. Nevertheless, it is really trifling compared even with our strained resources, and certainly with world needs. I plead with the Government to give further thought to the matter. I am sure that a substantial increase will receive not only widespread support on this side of the House, but from many men and women in this country.
Many people feel that money could and should be diverted from other programmes—for example, the space programme, however useful and laudable it might be in other directions. Never was there a greater need for a reassessment of the financial priorities involved.
The problems associated with population control are not peripheral to man's existence; they are fundamental to it. Some progress has been made, but it is impossible to be optimistic about the future. We may already be too late. But if we cannot be optimistic, we need not despair. There is certainly time and opportunity for Britain to take the moral leadership in the international attempt to solve this most serious of problems.

3.51 p.m.

The Minister for Overseas Development (Mr. Richard Wood): I am grateful, as I am sure the whole House is grateful, to the hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Dormand) for having drawn our attention to what I assure him I recognise as possibly the most urgent problem in the world. I assure the hon. Gentleman that I welcome the interest which he has been taking in this subject by putting down a number of Questions, one of which, as he reminded us, I answered a short time ago.
I repeat my rejection, which I offered to the hon. Gentleman some time ago, of any charge of complacency. If my credentials have to be examined in any way, although I am not in favour of recommending anyone to read past speeches which I have made in the House of Commons—most of them are better buried deep in the Library—I draw attention to a speech which I made in May, 1968, when I dwelt, as the hon. Gentleman has this afternoon, on the immensity of the problem and the need to tackle it.
There was a very important debate on this subject in another place a short time ago. Both the hon. Gentleman and I would agree with the noble Lord, Lord Snow that, in a sense, we all from time to time tend to fall into the danger of complacency because, rather naturally and for obvious reasons, we think that there are other important problems, which we all recognise, when we think about them, are in fact less important than the problem to which the hon. Gentleman has drawn attention.
The hon. Gentleman did not make a long speech. However, while he was on his feet, I think, if my mathematics are correct, that about 5,000 new babies were born in the world. This is a measure of the problem.
The hon. Gentleman quoted the statistics and said that there would be a certain doubling of the world population by the end of this century. He also expressed concern for this country. I should do so, too. However, he will recognise that my responsibilities relate mainly to the developing countries where the dangers are obviously far greater and the problem much less easy to solve.
To put the hon. Gentleman's definition of causes in other words, I merely say that mankind now has the power and the will to control the death rate; it has the power, but not the will, to control the birth rate. This is why we face these difficulties.
The hon. Gentleman asked what the consequences would be. I believe—I may be wrong—that life, even if the world population did double by 2000 A.D., would probably still be sustainable; but what concerns me is that I can see in those circumstances precious little room for any improvement whatsoever in living standards. I can foresee the world continuing over the years to come without any hope of improvement, a grim and precarious struggle for existence, and this does not give me any pleasure at all.
The hon. Gentleman quoted Mr. McNamara and expressed his admiration for him, which I entirely share. Mr. McNamara said:
No achieveable rate of economic growth will be sufficient to cope with an unlimited proliferation of people on our limited planet.
This again expresses the problem. Unless we find some means of controlling this


expanson, we shall—to adapt a phrase of Lord Canning a long time ago—have to call in the old world of famine, disease and war in order to redress the imbalance of the new. These are really the alternatives that one is left with—either famine, disease and war on the one side, or some method of population control on the other.
The hon. Gentleman suggested that it was probably unlikely—here we seem to be moving closer together—that we should be faced with mass starvation. I am glad he said that because I thought he exaggerated a little time ago when he talked about the prospect of millions of deaths from starvation. None of us can tell. My own assessment is that there would certainly be a number of deaths from lack of food; there are more likely to be many millions of people with too little food.
I had an opportunity recently of visiting the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, and then I saw in Indonesia shortly after the effect of these new strains of rice being grown and the far greater yield. I reflected, as I have already said earlier, that possibly the production of food in the world may keep pace in the kind of way that it does at the moment with an increase of population, but that the real danger to human health and human advancement would be the continuing grinding poverty for which I see, with the population increase, very little hope of relief.
The hon. Gentleman will agree that it is extremely difficult for any of us to look with certainty into a very uncertain future. We know that in many of the developing countries there are considerable reserves of metals and natural energy. We know that there may be a number of new discoveries and substitutes. We know that the inventiveness and adaptability of the human race is very considerable. There may, for all we know, be vast untapped reserves and resources in the oceans themselves which cover a very large part of the world's surface.
Therefore, we cannot tell what the future holds. But the best information that any of us can receive at present, and to which we have access, leads one on to the conclusion that the likely course of population increase will place the world

in very considerable economic difficulties unless we can find some means of controlling it.
The hon. Gentleman expressed disappointment—and he again expressed disappointment this afternoon—at my reply that there was going to be a world population conference in 1974. I pointed out that there would be various regional conferences leading up to it. I should now like to point out that apart from these regional conferences on population, there are in train a number of Food and Agriculture Organisation studies which are reasonably optimistic, as I hope I have been, about the possibility of food production. Also, there are studies by the International Labour Office which are a great deal less optimistic about employment opportunities in the future, and the I.L.O. has launched a programme to help to deal with the extra 225 million people who will need jobs not in the year 2000 but in 1980, nine years ahead.
If I felt that a world conference on population would provide the longed-for solution to our population problem, I should certainly press for it before 1974, and if I felt that a debate in the House of Commons would provide all the answers, I should ask my right hon. Friend the Lord President if we could have one after Easter. But the problems are perfectly well known, and they are being tackled, as I think the hon. Gentleman recognises, not only by the developing countries themselves but by a number of nations which provide aid and by international organisations as well.
I put it to the hon. Gentleman that it is not more talk but the process of patient persuasion which will make an impression upon these problems, which we all recognise. There are some Governments who are still not convinced of the need or of the benefits to be drawn from a policy of population control. As the hon. Gentleman said, they may be influenced by political, religious or racial reasons, and some, I think, are influenced by economic assessments which I myself believe to be mistaken.
At this moment, most Governments in Asia are now convinced of the necessity of population control, although many Governments in Africa and in Latin America are not so convinced. Some, as the hon. Gentleman said, are deeply


suspicious of the motives of ourselves and other donor nations. If I may say so, I do not think that it helps the cause to suggest, as the hon. Gentleman did, that they are right in being suspicious of our motives. Our motives, the motives of this Government and of Great Britain itself, are, I hope, entirely disinterested and aimed only at decreasing the dangers which we can all see ahead.
Three-quarters of the population in the developing world live in countries with official population policies. This in itself is quite encouraging for it obviously offers some hope for the future. What is discouraging is that only a tiny fraction of those living in those countries are reached by family planning education and services. This, therefore—I emphasise it again—is the task, and no amount of talk will of itself achieve it.
We and other nations are not only prepared to help in this patient persuasion, but we are prepared to devote increasing resources to the tackling of these problems. The hon. Gentleman said that little was being done. He generously recognised that we are now providing over £1 million, double what we were providing last year. To put it in another way, our direct aid to international organisations, the United Nations Fund for Population Activities and the I.P.P.F., has multiplied ten times in three years, to over £1 million. It may give the hon. Gentleman some encouragement for the future to know that we are ready to increase it further if we are satisfied that more money can be well spent.
Also—again, I think that the hon. Gentleman will probably agree—we should like, if it were required of us, to increase our present modest programme of bilateral aid—modest for reasons which are obvious to most of us. We recently introduced special terms which we hope will stimulate more requests.
The hon. Gentleman also asked about our attitude to the Population Institute. I should be most prepared to continue discussions with those concerned with the Institute who might be interested in its making its home in this country, and the Government would support my doing so.
As in all development, we are faced by the human difficulty. The difficulty is not the shortage of funds and not the shortage of interest in this country, but

the shortage of trained personnel on the ground where they are needed, and the problem of persuading millions of people to change their whole attitude and adopt a code of behaviour which in many cases seems to be very strange to them. We are in a vicious circle, recognising that birth control would be more acceptable if individual economic circumstances improved, but knowing that there is little hope of improvement while living standards are held down by the population expansion. I am encouraged, because I feel that many people are beginning to see reasons for having smaller families. We can certainly make resources available to make wider persuasion easier, and are prepared to do so, but the difficulty is that the persuasion itself is and must be the responsibility of Governments and people in developing countries, and of the family planning associations which we support through the I.P.P.S., for which last week I was glad to be able to join in helping to launch a campaign for further funds in this country.
These problems will not be solved by conferences and more talk, by preaching either to the converted or those still unconverted. What is urgently necessary, and is the only means of solving the problems that face us, is patient work from the countries concerned backed up by the necessary resources. The Government and this country are determined to play a full part in this international effort.

BRADFORD (ECONOMIC PROSPECTS)

4.7 p.m.

Mr. John Wilkinson: I am most grateful for the opportunity to raise a matter of specific constituency interest, namely, the economic prospects for the Bradford area. I welcome very much the presence of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, with whom I shared a dialogue on Friday 12th February about the future of the Leeds/Bradford airport, another relevant matter for the region's economic prospect. I also welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Mr. Spence), who is the Secretary of the Conservative Party's Yorkshire Group, and my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Mr. Fox), who brings his


experience in industry and in the region to bear in the debate.
Although both the debate on the Yeadon airport and today's debate have arisen at an inauspicious parliamentary hour from the point of view of getting a good audience, both subjects are very important to the constituents whom I have the honour to represent. By the end of the afternoon my hon. Friend the Minister should be coming to feel almost as much at home in the industrial West Riding of Yorkshire as in his native Harrow. I am sure that he will welcome any opportunity to visit our region.
I cannot claim, as did a previous Bradford Member, Mr. Titterington, to be born and bred in my city. Like so many Bradfordians, I am a Bradfordian by adoption. Nor am I, unlike Mr. Tittering-ton, a former Lord Mayor, of the warp and weft of my City. I cannot claim any particular expertise in the wool trade, which is our principal industry, employing some 23 per cent. of the people. My personal experience is in the aircraft industry and in engineering, but that sector is growing in Bradford and it is one in which our long-term prosperity probably resides. Without greater diversification and without a broader base for our regional economy, I do not think that Bradford can stay in the big league where it belongs.
It is customary to speak of the wool trade at this moment with a long face and to be full of alarmist prognostications. I refute any such ideas. All the authoritative statements one has heard from wool textile firms is that this is a cyclical recession—something which has occurred before. It is a phenomenon with which they are familiar and its gravity should not be exaggerated.
The N.E.D.C. Report—the Atkins Report—on the wool textile trade in 1969 bears out much of what is happening today. I want to quote from a recent speech by Mr. Clough, Chairman of the Wool Textile Delegation, about the current state of the trade because I am sure that my hon. Friend the Secretary of State would like to make some comments about that. His message was that, as Atkins foretold, the rationalisation that is taking place certainly means contraction in employment. No one will deny that. But it does not mean any contraction in performance and cer-

tainly not any diminution in the importance of the wool textile industry to the economy of this country. It is still one of the pillars upon which our economic prosperity is based. It is No. 6 in the export league. The statistics in recent years show that the performance of the industry has been most encouraging if one considers that it has been achieved in a period of recession, of recession not only nationally but world wide.
Mr. Clough went on to say that in the last three months of 1970
… wool consumption in most of the wool producing countries"—
that is, the Common Market, the United States, Japan and the United Kingdom—
was down by 12 per cent. compared with the similar quarter in 1969. The United Kingdom figure was 14 per cent. so there is a margin of only 2 per cent. in the decline. This is not to be exaggerated. The production of cloth—particularly important to Bradford —fell by an average of 10 per cent. This was exactly the same as in the United Kingdom. Worsted yarns production was down by 3 per cent. but in the United Kingdom by 7 per cent. The average figure for woollen yarn was down by 5 per cent. whereas the United Kingdom output dropped by only 2 per cent.
As a wool-textile producing nation, we were more than holding our own. That is an achievement in which this country and Bradford, as the metropolis of the wool textile trade, can justly take pride.
The biggest difference, however, was in the production of tops, and there the United Kingdom share was down by 21 per cent., or nearly twice the average. This is a sector in which there is still the greatest room for rationalisation. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley will agree that we are to see still further rationalisation and concentration of resources in the top-making and combing sections of the trade. I would like my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary to say something about that.
Over all, our performance is one in which we can take pride. The wool textile industry's contribution to our balance of payments in terms of export earnings and import savings last year amounted to no less than £230 million. Despite the recessions to which I have alluded, our exports earned £140 million last year which was only £9 million down on the figure for 1969. Mr. Clough concluded his speech on 23rd March by claiming that British wool textiles were


still "top of the pops", as I am sure anyone will agree when surveying the sartorial scene in swinging London, or any of the other major cities of the Western world.
However, if we are to maintain a consistent performance, we must be able to keep our prices competitive and we must also suffer the very minimum of adverse treatment from the Government. Everybody was most heartened and pleased by the Budget Statement on 30th March when the Chancellor of the Exchequer introduced Measures which did a great deal of good to the wool textile industry. What the wool textile industry demands, apart from correct fiscal policies, is that fair trading should be maintained.
On the first point of fiscal policies, I ask my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary to draw to the attention of the Chancellor for future Budgets—I know that 12 months ahead is a long time to be planning future Budgets—to purchase tax on knitting wools, rug wools, student dress lengths and household textiles, including blankets. I referred to the damage which the wool textile trade could suffer at the hands of exceedingly unhelpful Governments, and no Government were more unhelpful to the wool textile trade than the previous Administration, and it was the 1969 Budget which put this extra imposition of 13¾ per cent. on these items. I know that the Wool Textile Delegation is especially keen to have this tax rescinded if that is fiscally possible. It would be an incentive for home knitting, rug making and dressmaking and employment and activity in all these sections of the industry if we could have the tax reform which I have outlined.
As I said, there have been one or two criticisms about allegedly unfair trading practices. The wool textile trade does not want either Maundy money or tariff walls and protectionism. What we demand is fair trading, and I am sure that my hon. Friend will address himself to the criticisms which occasionally have been levelled about unfair practices and dumping from such countries as Portugal, Japan and so on. I am sure that he is able to inquire into these matters. There may well be little justification in the criticisms which have been levelled, but I should be grateful if we could have an

assurance that these matters are constantly under examination and that there is no question of trading malpractice in this regard.
I turn to the broader perspective. Bradford is not entirely a wool textile city. Its industry is much more diverse, and increasingly so. We are moving increasingly into engineering and the service industries, but, none the less, our problems cannot be looked at in any way other than the broad perspective of national regional policies. In doing so, I cannot turn to any better bible at this stage than the Report of the Committee under Sir John Hunt on the intermediate areas, a Report published in 1968. Our own problems in Bradford, although it is not part of an intermediate area, are relevant to regional policy.
I draw attention to a quotation in the Hunt Report from the White Paper on Regional Employment Programme, Cmmnd. 3310:
Some have unemployment well above the national average, but not all the other economic difficulties of the Development Areas. Others, without showing up to consistent high unemployment, tend to suffer from net emigration and a slow rate of economic growth, due to over-dependence on traditional forms of industry… Some areas fear that because of their proximity to the Development Areas, they will be particularly vulnerable to the increased competitive power of industry in the Development Areas.
This is particularly relevant to the City of Bradford because we are sandwiched between a development area 40 miles to the north and an intermediate area which comes up to Wakefield to the south-east of our City.
It has always been felt in industrial circles in Bradford that the arbitrary and unjust regional differentiations in fiscal incentives put us at a special disadvantage. I am particularly glad that the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry is undertaking a thorough review of regional policy on a national scale. As I say, we do not want Maundy money. It would be inappropriate for the City of Bradford to become part of an intermediate area. We saw during the period of the last Administration how more and more public money went into development and intermediate areas without any corresponding improvement, Either in economic growth or employment.
In other words, it was generally felt that more and more money was going into a bottomless pit which was not helping the area as it was alleged to be. It was also creating disincentives for adjoining regions. For that reason, the new approach which we await should end, or certainly alleviate, this regional disparity.
While I am dealing with regional policy, there is the matter of growth points. We have already had a few special development areas designated. One of the great advantages of the proposed form of local government which the Secretary of State for the Environment advanced in his White Paper was that the City of Bradford should become a metropolitan district, that it should encompass its natural catchment areas. No one in our area would say that the problems of Bradford can be divorced from the situation in Shipley, Keighley or further up Airedale or even Skipton. For that reason my hon. Friend might like to ponder whether Bradford should not become a growth point. It is ideally suited, with a good range of communications, a large and well-trained work force and a comparatively high surplus capacity of manpower. With all these factors it is ideally placed for a period of expansion and growth.
Dealing with communications, we are dependent on a good motorway system which has been created in recent months. The finishing touches have yet to be put to the completion of the motorway link between the M62, trans-Pennine motorway, and the City of Bradford. Here I would ask my hon. Friend to urge his hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment to reach a speedy decision on the interchange at Staithgate Lane on this motorway link. It is vital to the creation of a new modern industrial estate which it is hoped in Bradford will be an example to the whole of the North of England.
There was a piece about it in the Business Post section of the Yorkshire Post on 6th April. It is a £7 million industrial development which is proposed, providing up to 5,000 jobs for people in the Bradford area. The sponsors, the Mount St. Bernard group of Preston, claim to be bringing about a totally new concept of industrial development. It is to be the forerunner of at least half a dozen such

developments in the North of England, one of which will probably be in South Yorkshire which is an area with acute economic problems and severe unemployment. The estate will be self-contained. Parts will accommodate manufacturing plants based on scientific and technological industries and providing up to 3,500 jobs. Another section will be devoted to warehousing capacity. A third section will contain administration facilities, shops and hotel. A further 1,500 jobs would be provided. Another aspect of the development is ornamental parks and precincts for shoppers. It is on the fringes of the city close to the good communications which the motorway system will provide and it is vital for the future prosperity of our city.
We should not forget the continuation of the M62 to the Merseyside ports and Hull. It is progressing eastward at a good rate, but until the final connection with Hull is made I do not think industrialists in Bradford will be entirely pleased.
I turn to the question of air communications in which my hon. Friend has a particular departmental interest. I have not an obsession about it, but I certainly have a great interest in it, because the West Riding is, to my mind, the only industrial area without an airport fully developed to modern international standards. By "international standards" I mean standards capable of operating contemporary jet aircraft for domestic services and services to Europe. We ask no more than that.
My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State has been most helpful. He understands the problem exceedingly well. In the debate on 12th February he said that it would be possible for the Leeds/ Bradford joint airport committee to make another planning application at some time in the future for the proposed runway extension, but he warned that before doing so the committee
would be well advised to consider carefully whether the circumstances in which their recent application was turned down have altered to any appreciable extent."—[OFFICIAL, REPORT, 12th February, 1971; Vol. 811, c. 1168.]
We have taken careful heed of my hon. Friend's warning, and yesterday the joint airport committee met and heard the future plans of the local operator, North-East Airlines, which provides most


of the services from the Leeds/Bradford Airport. It was decided that we should do what the Minister suggested. We would try to evaluate whether the situation had changed. The airport joint committee has called for a full study asking for full statistical data, operating information and all relevant facts. On the basis of the facts established it will decide whether to make a future application.
My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State was right when he said in the debate that he was not pessimistic about the prospects. It was announced yesterday at the meeting that North-East Airline would continue to operate its equipment for another five years, which pleases everybody. The Viscount is one of the sturdiest and best British civil aircraft designed since the Second World War. I am glad that it will be soldiering on well into the 1970s from the Leeds/Bradford Airport. But air communications are vital for an area. We need to be able to make connections straight with Europe, particularly when, assuming that the negotiations go well, we join the European Economic Community, because the wool trade will want to take advantage of the increased export opportunities.
Although my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley has a special interest which I admire in it, one should not he too beguiled by Thorne Waste unless it is taken note of in the light of national airport policy. I hope that before an announcement is made about the site of another international airport, supposedly for London, my hon. Friend will assure me that a full study will be made of a national airport policy. If we had an airport farther north it would not only serve Bradford and the economic prosperity of our region but would also tap a great source of potential passenger demand and would probably preclude the necessity for a new international airport in the London area.
Therefore, if my hon. Friend wants my own personal tip where a new international airport should be—I am sure he must have had counless tips—my own is Castle Donington, which lies astride the MI and is in good proximity to the East Midland region, to Nottingham, Derby, Leicester, and it is only about three-quarters of an hour's drive from Sheffield. It is not much farther from Shef-

field than Thorne Waste and needs only a fairly small extension of its runway, and it is in a not-so-very populated area. It would provide not only from Bradford but for the North an inter-continental airport which would be a valuable addition to the regional airport at Yeadon, which should continue to be fully utilised.
There are many other aspects of Bradford's development which were further amplified in the Hunt Committee Report, and I shall draw the attention of the House to them because these are criteria which were described as being criteria by which intermediate status should be judged, and they are all very much evidenced in Bradford's own economy.
The first of these criteria was sluggish or falling employment. The process of rationalisation in the wool textile industry and certain difficulties in the engineering industry, and in particular the repercussions of the failure of Rolls-Royce, have meant that we experience a sluggish or falling employment and the major implications of slow growth. In our own City of Bradford, the percentage of the male work force unemployed is 5·4 per cent., I believe, and that is certainly above the national average and it does cause concern.
The second criterion in Hunt was the slow growth of personal incomes. Of necessity, incomes in our area are relatively lower than are incomes in other industrial parts of the country. The profit margins to which the wool textile industry has had to work have been low for a very long time, but, perhaps, with low profit margins has gone an understanding, both on the part of management and on the part of the work force, of the importance of good labour relations and of the minimum of disputes.
The latest settlement which was made for the wage structure of the wool textile industry for the next year is a sign of how good relations are in the City of Bradford, and this is a matter to which I would draw my hon. Friend's attention when we are talking in terms of bringing new industry to the City, for this is a very great asset. Mr. Jack Peel, famous for his leadership of his union in the textile trade, apart from the T.G.W.U., which has responsibility for the combing section, described himself, at the extraordinary congress which the Trades Union


Congress held on 18th March, as a "militant moderate". We could do with a great many more of them around. I am glad that his example has permeated fairly wide through the trade union movement in the City of Bradford. It is an advantage when, as I have said, we do have this fact of relatively low personal incomes there.
There is another criterion, slow rate of additions to commercial and industrial premises. When we look at the number of industrial development certificates issued to Bradford over the past six years we see that there do not seem to have been any very major additions to capacity in the City. There is a low level of increase in industrial premises. It is, perhaps, understandable when we take into account the number of industrial properties which already exist. The only exception was when Bairds Television expanded a couple of years ago.
Another criterion was,
low or declining proportions of women at work".
It is a historic fact that over 40 per cent. of the work force in the wool textile trade in Bradford consists of women. They have always been invaluable and we have relied on them. With rationalisation, there has been a marked decline in the number of women at work which, according to Hunt, is a sign of low growth, although this could be disputed.
Another criterion was
over-reliance on industries whose demand for labour is growing or falling".
The wool textile trade is a classic example of that. The next criterion was "decayed or inadequate environment". Although a great deal has been done to improve the environment through the Yorkshire and Humberside clean-up campaign initiated in 1968, which is a great monument to "self-help"—which has always been Bradford's motto, as well as our party's motto—there is a great deal still to be done.
Lastly, "serious net outward migration". A large number of people are migrating from the city, especially highly trained managerial and professional personnel, which the city needs to attract. There are large immigrations which counter-balance this, so the net population changes very little. It is a matter

of concern that it is difficult to attract high quality management personnel to the area.
In conclusion, I draw attention to a few of the good things which our Government have done for the city. After the Budget I received many laudatory messages. I will read out one which I received from the President of the Chamber of Commerce, who is a leading figure in the wool textile industry:
This Budget is the most encouraging for years, and at long last there is some incentive and encouragement which is so badly needed, and I am sure that we can all look forward to the future with hope.
This is in marked contrast to the experience of Bradford in the six years from 1964 to 1970. The difficulties which Bradford is facing are nothing new. Taking the number of redundancies and factory closures, the startling fact emerges that the great turnabout in our fortunes occurred in 1968 just after devaluation. The number of closures in the wool textile industry doubled in the three years from 1968 to 1970 as compared with the four years from 1964 to 1967. In engineering, the number of factory closures almost trebled on average compared with the corresponding period.
The same applied to the redundancy figures. There was a significant doubling in the number of redundancies in 1968 in the wool textile trade. In engineering the redundancies went up virtually four times. This was the great watershed in the fortunes of the city of Bradford, and I am glad to say that this Administration has given the city new hope.
I will quote from another letter which I have received from Associated Engineering Ltd., a leading firm in Bradford, just after the Budget:
Since dictating this letter …
—the letter was written on the day of the Budget—
… I have heard the Budget announcements and am delighted at the proposals relating to the abolition of S.E.T. Value-added tax will certainly add to our work load, but it is a much lesser evil than S.E.T. and, although we do not pay purchase tax, I know that other companies in the group will be pleased that their principal customers in the motor industry are likely to have somewhat less tax on their products when V.A.T. spreads the load more evenly. All in all an excellent Budget and, together with other sections of Government policy, it is likely to get Britain moving forward to higher investment than of late.


That is just the thing that the City of Bradford, like other industrial areas, needs.
The trouble has been that our fiscal policies have not only been regionally unfair; they have been unfair in their discrimination against certain key sectors of industry. In the report of the Humberside Economic Planning Council, published at the end of last year, emphasis was laid on the increasing rôle which it was hoped science-based and service industries would play in our city. Science-based industries are arriving to an increasing degree. I refer in particular to Baird's television and the manufacture of colour television sets on a large scale in my constituency. We also have sectors of the aircraft components industry, such as Rotax.
Colour television is a classic example of an industry that has suffered from the discriminatory effects of purchase tax. Whenever the Chancellor wanted to apply the regulator—as he so regularly did under the Socialist Administration—people in my constituency who worked on colour television sets—especially the women—were made redundant. I specially welcome the reform that the Chancellor has announced for 1973—the abolition of S.E.T. and purchase tax in their present forms and their replacement by a value-added tax.
We rely on the service industries. The Post Office strike showed how great a proportion of the work force in Bradford was engaged in this work. We have the Empire Stores, and Gratton Warehouses—mail order businesses. We should like to see the service industries expand, and we believe that what the Chancellor announced in his Budget will greatly help them.
We are most encouraged by the actions of the Government to date. It has been difficult time, but the new fiscal measures and the new review of regional policy should help us. Above all, on this Maundy Thursday I can assure my hon. Friend that we want no Maundy money for Bradford.

4.43 p.m.

Mr. Edward Lyons: There are two minutes left for another Member representing Bradford. I am

sorry for the hon. Member for Shipley (Mr. Fox) and the hon. Member for Keighley (Miss Joan Hall), who have been waiting anxiously to contribute to the debate.
The Bradford Area Development Association is doing sterling work for Bradford. Bradford rejoices in one of the most remarkable and successful crusading evening newspapers—the Telegraph and Argus—which is open to all views and is led by a remarkable and energetic editor. The area association and the Telegraph and Argus both know what is wrong with Bradford. They know that it is necessary to get more money into the town in order that the people there can buy more goods, that the shops can put on better displays, with goods of a higher standard, and that more can be purchased. They know that more houses need to be built and that people should be able to rent them, because wages there are very low. They know that people need more money to pay the higher dental and other health charges.
We have a low-wage economy. We have heard a lot about wage inflation, but it cannot be said that the Bradford workers have grabbed high wages. For years and years Bradford has has a good non-strike record, especially in the textile industry. They people have had very low wages. The effect upon Bradford has been catastrophic. Employers have done their best. They have gone on without much in the way of profit until finally we open the newspaper and find that another half dozen firms have gone into liquidation. That is not the way to run Britain.
I am delighted to see that the textile industry is modernising rapidly and is putting its house in order. I cannot disagree with the less politically contentious contributions of the hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Wilkinson). Bradford needs assistance. It is losing a lot of skilled people. It needs a shot in the arm. It needs help in that when it applies for permission to build new factory estates that application is looked on benignly. It needs all the help it can get to diversify.
If it can get that there will be higher wages and with higher wages the people will be able to afford the rents for new houses and those 40,000 unfit houses will


begin to be replaced by decent housing. The shops will sell better goods, there will be more attractive displays, the town will be more worthy of its first-class theatre, first-class newspaper, first-class university and first-class people.

4.46 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Anthony Grant): This has been a helpful debate and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Wilkinson) upon choosing this subject. I know of his concern and the remarkable vigour and vigilance with which he cares for the interests of Bradford in this House. He drew attention to the debate we had a little while ago on the question of the Yeadon airport. I do not want to go over that ground again. It is one of the interesting reflections of our times that the number of hon. Members who actually want a national airport in their constituency is almost matched by the number who do not want one in any circumstances. I have noted carefully what my hon. Friend said and shall follow the progress of this matter with great interest.
My hon. Friend spoke with a greater degree of optimism than did the hon. Member for Bradford, East (Mr. Edward Lyons). It is a matter of degree, but for my part I look upon the future of Bradford with perhaps a greater degree of optimism than the hon. Gentleman. I will read the Telegraph and Argus article to which he referred. It seems that if Bradford has any cause for complaint, it is the complaint that everyone in the country has, that they want more money, which we all do. I hope that the people there will appreciate that the Government's economic policies are directed precisely to that end—to get the economy moving again in the interests of everyone in the country, not least the people of Bradford.
There are grounds for optimism rather than pessimism. I recognise that the rundown in the traditional woollen industry of Bradford has brought severe problems. Only last year I visited Bradford in the course of a regional tour of Yorkshire and I was extremely impressed with what I saw, particularly with the people I met and with whom I had discussions. While the area abounds in attractive open spaces and has good

reasonably-priced housing, it is worth pointing out that 50 per cent. of Bradford's housing stock pre-dates the first world war.
It also has problems with derelict industrial buildings, mostly woollen mills and warehouses. This is another pressing problem. I am glad to note that Bradford Council has plans for general improvement areas under the 1969 Housing Act. The council is also attempting a programme of 500 council houses per year to meet the needs of its people. Under existing legislation the local authority is eligible for grant of 75 per cent. for clearance purposes and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment gives every encouragement to local authorities to make full use of the grants. His Department and mine are at present considering problems of reclamation of out-of-date or decaying industrial premises not covered by existing legislation.
Industrial pollution of the River Aire is being tackled under the city's major reconstruction schemes which include a programme of new sewerage works, and this will reduce flooding. I am also pleased to note that Bradford is an active clean air authority. As I noticed on my visit, the city has experienced a substantial improvement in general cleanliness.
The M62, when it is built, linking up with the M1, will add greatly to Bradford's attraction as an industrial area. I have noted what my hon. Friend said about the interchange, and I will draw this to the attention of my right lion. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment who, I am sure, will very carefully note it. The road structure is important and valuable to Bradford and its industry.
Generally speaking, we believe that the infrastructure prospects of Bradford are good. This is important, because for the wool textile industry, centred at Bradford, I recognise that 1970 was a difficult trading year, and I acknowledge that its difficulties are not yet over. Textiles are now in a transitional stage of development, with the older techniques and natural fibres being increasingly replaced by newer technology and manmade fibres. Whilst Bradford and the West Riding Occupy a dominant position in the older wool textile technology, the newer textile developments are taking


place in many areas of the United Kingdom. The Bradford area has to some extent been losing out to the textile industries in other areas.
I should not like to give the House the impression that there is no future for the wool textile industry. I should like to pay tribute to its very real achievement, and to endorse what my hon. Friend has said in this connection. The industry satisfies 95 per cent. of the United Kingdom home market demand for its products, and last year, in spite of very difficult trading conditions in many of its better overseas markets, it achieved exports of £114 million. When I was in Japan, of all places, earlier this year, one of the most impressive pieces of information I had was about the success of Yorkshire textile exporters in this difficult country which is, nevertheless, a splendid market for them.
We are convinced that the industry has a healthy and profitable future. Undoubtedly, it will benefit greatly from the fiscal measures announced in the Budget Statement by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. This will be of considerable assistance to all industry in Bradford. I note what my hon. Friend said about purchase tax. This, naturally, is not a matter for me nor one that I can deploy in this debate, but I am sure that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will have noted the comments that have been made and will give them careful consideration.
I note also my hon. Friends observations on dumping. We in the Department operate anti-dumping legislation fairly and as far as possible speedily. Provided we can get the evidence which satisfies the criteria laid down by the Statutes, I think that my hon. Friend will find that we shall act swiftly in counteracting dumping if, as he suggests, it is damaging the industry.
To remain competitive, the industry must continue the process of rationalisation which has been going on for some time. The best elements in the industry are aiming for a highly paid, multi-shift labour force. This can come about only by sensible investment in new machinery and techniques. It would be a disservice to the industry as a whole and would damage the long-term interests of both

employers and employees to try artificially to maintain unviable units. The industry, as a whole, accepts this and has, by its announced investment intentions, shown that it has faith in its own future.
Employment has been referred to by my hon. Friend. There has been a drop in the number of insured persons in employment during the period 1964 to 1969 of 7 per cent. This has been due primarily to the need for restructuring and modernisation of the wool textile industry. But this ultimately can bring only benefits to Bradford's oldest and most important industry.
The present unemployment position is by no means satisfactory. Undoubtedly it must give concern to Bradford, as it does in other parts of the country. Bradford's unemployment, according to the March figures, is 4·2 per cent., which is above the national average. Nevertheless, it is well below the average for development or intermediate areas. For example, in the Yorkshire coalfield intermediate area the figure is 4·7 per cent. and in North Humberside the figure is 4·8 per cent.
I am glad that my hon. Friend did not press for special development area status. He did not hold out the begging bowl, but recognised that we shall keep the position under review whilst at the same time giving a period of stability following our recent decisions for industry as a whole.
I.D.C. policy has been touched upon. My Department's policy has been liberally interpreted. Some 89 certificates were issued between 1968 and 1970 for projects estimated to provide additional jobs for 1,890 workers. No I.D.C. applications were refused in Bradford during 1969 and 1970. I propose to continue the present policy, subject only to the requirements of the development areas whose needs must remain paramount in view of the limited amount of mobile industry available.
The coming local government reforms, by making Bradford part of a metropolitan area in West Yorkshire, will be of substantial help to the future development of the area. This is one way in which the Government are assisting Bradford. By providing an improved infrastructure, the new authorities will be able


to tackle the problems involved. This in turn should enable industries in the area to operate with confidence in future.
I believe that the outlook for Bradford can be optimistic. I was pleased that my hon. Friend indicated that the outlook of his constituents was one dedicated to self-help and to assisting themselves and not always crying out for financial assistance.
The Bradford area has its difficulties, but in the light of all the known facts

I am firmly convinced that it can look forward to an essentially sound future. When the period of restructuring is over, Bradford's unique wool textile industry should emerge strongly adapted to hold its own in both home and world markets.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at one minute to Five o'clock till Monday, 19th April, pursuant to the Resolution of the House of 25th March.